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It's an unusual year at E3, as the conversation has been so focussed on the first wave of virtual reality and augmented reality hardware for gamers, drawing much of the attention away from the usual big-budget franchise installments from popular game series such as Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed. Instead, the press conferences (really more like giant fan rallies) put on by Sony  HP Pavilion G61-401SA fan  and Microsoft promoted exclusive content for each company's respective console -- the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One -- new software features, and of course, the promise of VR. Nintendo, which also both makes console hardware and publishes games, remained in a state of semi-hibernation at this year's E3, opting for a pre-taped video message (rather than a live press conference) with a mostly ho-hum lineup of games. The company is working behind the scenes on a followup to its Wii U system, dubbed the NX, and a strategy for extending its brand to mobile phone games -- but we won't get news on either until 2016. In the meantime, it's just not really playing at the same level as Sony and Microsoft. The Xbox One is adding backward compatibility for some Xbox 360 games, through a combination of downloads and physical disc checks. The feature will be available later this year. A new controller, called the Elite, looks impressive but will cost $150. Halo 5 is the Xbox One exclusive blockbuster to beat, even if the last few games in the series suffered from Halo fatigue. A new Gears of War game, due in 2016, adds to the exclusive list -- along with an Xbox One remaster of the original game, coming later this year. Minecraft, the insanely popular building game now owned by Microsoft, made a strong case for the company's HoloLens augmented-reality technology. Hot off announcing a partnership with virtual-reality upstart Oculus Rift last week, Microsoft doubled down and committed to working with Valve's rival VR platform as well. Fallout 4 on the Xbox One will have access to the same player-created add-on content that PC gamers have enjoyed for years, potentially extending the life of the game. (It's possible that feature may find its way to the PS4, too -- eventually.) Indie games got only a nod, but Cuphead, created by two Canadian brothers, was an instant cult favorite. Briefly mentioned, or not at all: Windows 10 gaming, new Kinect games or features, the second-screen SmartGlass app. While not highlighted at the press conference, Microsoft revealed a totally overhauled Xbox One dashboard that will hit the console before the end of the year, too.   Between the press conferences, which now play more toward the consumer audience watching them stream online than the press in attendance, and the massive multistory booths on the E3 show floor, these two corporate giants continue their years-long domination of E3. But that may be changing, as the single hottest must-see   SONY VPCEA21FD keyboard  demo of the show took place in a small set of upstairs private meeting rooms, where Oculus was showing off the latest build, and the new controller, of the Oculus Rift. The post-E3 console landscape A possible VR revolution on the horizon notwithstanding, these two living-room consoles still dominate the here and now of the mainstream gaming world. And while the press conferences emphasized differences and exclusives, the irony of the E3 show is that it drives home how similar the PS4 and Xbox One remain. The vast majority of big games from third-party publishers -- Fallout 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Batman: Arkham Knight, EA's lineup of sports games -- will be released on both systems, and deliver a largely similar experience on both. Since both consoles debuted in November 2013, CNET has generally recommended the PS4 over the Xbox One, initially because of its lower price and tighter focus on delivering a game-centric experience. But Microsoft, to its credit, has worked tirelessly to reverse a rash of bad decisions that burdened its third-generation console. Having already locked in to a lower price and dropped the Kinect as a required peripheral, the addition of compatibility with older 360 games and a promising overhaul of the confusing and crowded dashboard -- both coming later this year -- are both worthwhile additions to the One. (We'll update our review of both consoles as these software updates become available.) Sony, coming from a better position in the current console war (PS4 sales have, so far, outdistanced those of the Xbox One), had less to prove at this E3. If Sony had a weakness, it was that its most promising exclusive titles -- games like Uncharted 4 and The Last Guardian -- won't hit until 2016. But new game consoles have historically needed to hit the three-year mark before really coming into their own. That both of these press conferences could be described as mostly  ACER Aspire 1402LC keyboard  killer, with only a little filler, shows that there's finally enough quality content in the pipeline to keep fans of either console happy for the next couple of years.

This week, the video game industry will descend on Los Angeles to hold the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 , its loudest, biggest and most lavish annual conference. Much of it is a giant advertisement for video game consoles, with some of the most highly anticipated presentations coming from  COMPAQ Presario CQ40-129AX keyboard  Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, discussing games like sci-fi epic Halo 5 for the Xbox One , adventure game Uncharted 4 for the PlayStation 4 and space shooter Star Fox for the Wii U. From the outside looking in, it may seem like video game consoles are the most popular products in the industry. That's beginning to change. Sales generated by PC games are poised to overtake those for video game consoles, a monumental shift that is many years in the making, according to data from industry researcher PwC. By the end of 2016, PC game sales are expected to reach $29 billion around the world, compared with $28 billion in sales for the console market. The video game industry is going through rapid change. Gone are the days when people played games only on specialized devices, like a video game console. Smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes and virtual reality systems have begun to change the way video games are played, as well as how we all pay for them. "You could have said 10 years ago that there were three major platforms: Console, PC and Web," said Brian Blau, an analyst with research firm Gartner. "Now you have TV streamers, mobile devices -- you even have watches today. There's so many more types of devices to play games." One of the biggest beneficiaries of that change has been the PC, which has become the only way to play some of the best-looking and most popular games in the industry and to enjoy some of the most cutting-edge features online gaming has to offer . And later this year, that will also be the only way to play high-quality virtual reality games, offering players the opportunity to strap on a headset and transport themselves to all manner of imaginary worlds. The PC won't just be  Toshiba Qosmio G30-209 keyboard  the technology on which players spend the most money playing games, but it will soon become one of the key battlegrounds of new technologies as well. From PC to consoles, and back again In the '80s and early '90s, the PC platform was credited with pioneering game genres, establishing the first communities around online multiplayer and pushing the technological boundaries of the medium with better-looking and more-realistic experiences. Many of the most graphically intensive and influential games in the industry were available only on PCs then, such as the sci-fi shooting game Doom and the hit strategy game StarCraft. But the industry's focus started to change as Internet connections proliferated, computer components advanced and it all became cheaper. The solution: A specialized computer designed specifically for playing games on televisions. Beginning nearly 40 years ago, products like the Commodore 64, the Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System helped spark consumer interest in nascent video game technology. By the time blockbuster franchises like Microsoft's Halo and Activision's Call of Duty military shooting titles came along, the console was the central figure of the industry. Companies loved consoles because they were simple products to sell, and consumers loved how comparatively magical the set-top box was. An Xbox or PlayStation upgrade came along only every half decade or so, far from the PC industry's constantly changing components and model numbers. "With a console you turn it on, put your game in and you just play," Blau said. "Consoles were a one-stop shop for your games." Following the introduction of Sony's PlayStation in 1994 and Nintendo's N64 in 1996, each of the industry's biggest franchises -- from adventure game Super Mario Bros. to soccer franchise FIFA -- found their homes on game consoles. Most games on the market today are released on both consoles and PCs, including some of the most successful titles, like the action-adventure title Assassin's Creed: Unity and the fantasy game The Witcher 3. Yet the PC market is sometimes left in the backseat , with some games launching long after a console release, and some not at all. The crime drama game Grand Theft Auto 5 didn't make it's way to the PC until 19 months after   HP Pavilion dm3-2010us fan  its console launch.

E3 into a stadium, you will be immediately attracted to the Nintendo booth. Nintendo booth E3 this year is undoubtedly one of the regions most concerned, not only the largest area and has the most fans, from the scene to see a great beat Microsoft and Sony booth posture. With the image of the birth of 30 years with Mario opportunity, Nintendo's E3 booth accumulated a lot of popularity, many fans to collect the 30th anniversary badge at the long lines to participate in the game to win, fans absolutely crazy heat   IBM Lenovo ThinkPad R52 1844 keyboard  than you can imagine. But closer scrutiny we find, in fact, the model is still the Nintendo booth WiiU series host and 3Ds handheld, and no new Nintendo with new wine in old bottles E3 its way of doing less of a surprise indeed. There is no surprise in new products, how much or regretted it. Even so, of course, the image of the charm of Mario Nintendo still helping to create a myth, but I am concerned that Nintendo can rely on this cartoon and game ecology charm myth for how long? After E3 Nintendo really should accelerate development of new products.  Because aspects of the product positioning, Sony and Microsoft at E3 is always to rival the image of the show, this year is no exception. Stand with Sony booth across the aisle only one Microsoft Xbox One, the great rival advance scientific meaning. The display form, Microsoft Xbox One relatively more conservative still in accordance with the host and supporting Xbox One way the game show, Sony is relatively more active, not only strive in the game with a host of exhibition form, and in virtual reality aspect came out on top. Sony Project Morpheus under virtual reality scene attracted a large number of fans to go to experience, Sony and Microsoft also unveiled a new host not the case, Sony will undoubtedly rely on the virtual reality experience of Taiwan earned more eyeballs. Turn over the venues you will find, whether it is a large company, or some of the little-known brand, the introduction of virtual reality equipment at the booth were able to get a good focus. Gamers for virtual reality devices enthusiasm is very high, even at the line for tens of minutes to experience. After all is attractive virtual reality is too great, the players want to experience something. This reflects a problem that, in reality, virtual reality VR future potential is very large. Currently Oculus, Sony, Samsung and other companies have their own VR virtual reality products, but only Oculus rift as official merchandise on the market. Future more such products will be gradually unveiled listed software company will gradually follow in the game, the traditional hardware vendors to cooperate actively with virtual reality equipment company. Until one day cost virtual reality device can be reduced to a thousand dollars or even 500 yuan less time, casual gamers face fun game, fun time experience, will have no reason to refuse to go. VR virtual reality will enter the cafe and general hands of ordinary players, popular, has become a popular gaming products.  AMD can  HP Pavilion 15-p030nl fan  be said that this E3, among the most surprising, not only high-profile press conference held, is to launch a series of blockbuster products. As chip makers, AMD is well aware of the hardware in advance of truth, is the best proof of the slogan "open a new era of PC games," is to come up with the impressive graphics products. This is undoubtedly the dual Fiji, Fury X, Fury, R9 300 series, R7 300 series and R9 Nano so many blockbuster products launched AMD demonstrated the commitment of the force of PC games. These new cards not only stands for the graphics market control force is to attract more software vendors, chip peripheral manufacturers cooperation. HBM new technology allows AMD has a new advantage in graphics cards, NVIDIA graphics and patterns peer competition is because of these efforts is inclined AMD. From the next period of time to see, perhaps in cooperation with other particles NVIDIA will actively follow up on the introduction of similar technology vendors, but a short time AMD will undoubtedly have a super strong assertiveness face opponents.  Participate in the E3 still very much feeling, new games of prosperous hardware fatigue is the most prominent features of the three game platform vendors Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony did not come up with new hardware host, although people feel a little sorry, but no the new models but did not affect the sense of competition between each other, opposing sing very impressive. Mrs On the other hand I have observed, although the game console misfiring, but the rise of other devices should not be overlooked. Including AMD's graphics and technology flows offensive, as well as the general trend of virtual reality VR. If AMD's new graphics and technology currently is leading the future can not even accurately determine the trajectory, then the virtual reality of the situation is completely different. Given to the game brings a new experience, VR virtual reality gamers sought after degree is not difficult to see that after  Toshiba Satellite U845 fan  some time the future of virtual reality VR almost bound to spread. It is convened and E3 are not changed before and after the ending of a major trend. So, you ready to experience virtual reality VR preparations?

Red and black colors, dapper stature, water and stack memory gives look forward to endless performance, which is the new architecture --Fiji flagship red to bring players intuitive feel. Although its authenticity can still unknown, but based on the new architecture HBM Fiji memory technology has attracted worldwide attention. Different from previous technological  Toshiba Satellite L500-1WG motherboard  advances, Fiji architecture has had a disruptive change architecture opportunity that HBM memory fitted. HBM memory not only provide higher storage density, greater memory bandwidth and better energy than performance, but also will completely change the situation surrounding graphics architecture and graphics card design. This completely changed from the inside out, it is AMD always need opportunities.   However, if you feel Fiji architecture only HBM This technology breakthrough, it may underestimate this new flagship AMD experience after two cycles before the launch of the product. In addition to HBM, AMD also for this "reversion as" equipped with a large number of new technologies and applications. Although the distance is the test release and about a week, but we've got a lot of information about Fiji architecture. So then, let us sneak peek look at Fiji infrastructure owned by other "killer" it. In addition to HBM memory, Fiji undoubtedly the most impressive features of DirectX 12 support from the. Microsoft four years as the first update of the latest version of the graphics API, DirectX 12 even before it has been released a long time for people to "known", and it is the liberation of CPU and significantly enhance the utilization of multi-core new features and it's non-scores have been Mantle both media and fans in the middle a hot topic. But in fact, improved DirectX 12 is much more than that. DirectX 12 capable of benefits In previous DirectX among graphics associated thread, whether it is light treatment, memory operation request or physical processes, etc., will eventually be in accordance with a specific arrangement order summary and into the processing queue which GPU tasks, this summary The ultimate way to make GPU processing in a de facto single-threaded state. Compared with previous versions, DirectX 12 further emphasized the multi-thread scheduling and use parallel GPU resources weights.  DirectX 12 game effects Among the DirectX 12, Microsoft allows a program to allocate different processes to different independent threads, and then let GPU throughput parallel manner and deal with these threads. Used to be unified to light treatment on the same road, the memory operation requests or physical process can now be separated into their respective orbits were simultaneously executed. Open concurrent processing of benefits are obvious, serial threading process for enhancing the reuse rate GPU unit has a huge constraint, because the graphics thread can not contain all of the operations corresponding to the respective units within the GPU, when a thread is executed When serial thread execution even most of the way to make part of the GPU unit is in the "idle" state, the energy generated by this state is completely wasted, and a large number of idle throughout the GPU can not be converted into faster frames. SONY VPC-EB47GM keyboard  So DirectX 12 era, we have reason to believe we can take advantage of multi-threaded parallel processing features of GPU can be done more efficiently render action. Hawaii has 8xACE structure architecture The reason why DirectX 12 is one of Fiji's killer, because Fiji architectures GCN architecture itself has been completed based on the use of this feature of the design. In Hawaii before the release of which architecture, AMD completed the front-end design architectures GCN adjusted by 8 group ACE parallel structure design, GCN architecture already has a good ability to complete the division of thread and parallel throughput. As long as API allows, also based in Fiji GCN architecture can operate in parallel to make thread peppered throughout the GPU, lifting unit multiplexing rate and to improve energy efficiency and the practical implementation of the entire GPU than the property.  Update API and higher efficiency allows game makers bolder use of special effects, which of course is to enhance the protection of the gaming experience, but has long been conventional 2D plane around rendering mode to create visual effects techniques has been difficult in a short time significantly enhance or change the player's gaming experience within. In response to this phenomenon approach, AMD Fiji prepared a different technique to deal with, and that is LiquidVR. AMD's VR solutions --LiquidVR LiquidVR is AMD launched a new immersive experience based on the principles of the VR stereoscopic display technology, which has three objectives: comfort, compatibility, and exciting content. According to AMD official statistics, LiquidVR techniques include data lock (Latest data latch), asynchronous shaders (Asynchronous shaders), asynchronous multi-GPU rendering (Affinity Multi-GPU) and other new features, can be achieved with lower latency and better screen, so there is a sense more realistic. LiquidVR performance level of ease of use very well, in terms of compatibility, LiquidVR can make the picture directly to the output, plug and play, do not worry about the desktop settings, user-independent elements interfere with the use. The terms of presentation content, LiquidVR make more rapid feedback, a higher frame rate, provide the user a better experience. After a 3D stereoscopic display and a series of groping after, VR virtual reality is becoming a hot new direction of the industry, which in relative terms is very broad application areas, including education, health care, big data visualization, training, virtual social game entertainment Experience all will thus subvert occur. AMD recently launched the LiquidVR SDK, can help programmers better games. With Fiji and other next-generation AMD graphics architecture fitted, LiquidVR will become AMD to provide users with an ideal platform for a new visual experience.   After more than ten years of development experience, GPU as well as the basis of the traditional game industry is facing enormous challenges, how to enhance the user experience, bringing different from the previous result of visual presentation for gamers, this is the future of gaming and PC graphics industry's survival and development must go through problems. AMD on Fiji attempted a series of new technology, there were not around the themes of this. Whether successful or not, such demands are worthy of recognition. Fiji architecture has been imminent, soon   HP Pavilion dm3-2010us fan  come before us, and it has reawakened a lot of players has faded graphics card circle enthusiasm and attention, just from creating a sense of freshness and impact perspective, Fiji undoubtedly very excellent. It is foreseeable that, if we can seize this good opportunity to make full use of HBM memory brings various favorable factors to adjust the architecture, AMD should be able to open up new prospects for their future.

Would you believe more people watch people playing video games than they do basketball or baseball? For proof, look no further than a recent competition in Los Angeles. Reggie Fils-Aime, the towering and affable president of the US division of Japanese game maker Nintendo, had been preparing for the past year to compete in a World Championship of the  Toshiba Satellite C55T-A5394 keyboard  company's games. The game was Super Smash Bros., one of Nintendo's most popular fighting tites. He was controlling Ryu, of the faces the iconic Street Fighter franchise. The character, muscles bulging and forever wearing an intense expression, is equipped to fell opponents with his trademark hurricane kick. Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime saw defeat at the hands of the formidable Jigglypuff at the company's World Championship. Nintendo Fils-Aime's challenger, competitive gamer Juan "Hungrybox" Debiedma, was controlling Jigglypuff, a cute pink animal from the popular Pokemon monster hunting video game. Imagine a stuffed animal, give it even cuter eyes, and you have Jigglypuff. It sings opponents to sleep. Fils-Aime's character was knocked out in the first 4 seconds of the game. The crowd laughed, and then expressed support. But Fils-Aime didn't have a chance -- he died repeatedly in the following three minutes and 54 seconds. This all played out in a theater full of fans. More than 200,000 more were watching live over the Internet. If you were to construct a timeline of popular technologies in the video game industry, people being watched live by an audience as they play competitively over the Internet would be at the bleeding edge. The trend has spawned entire businesses, it's the subject of TV stations in South Korea and it's expected to attract an audience of 134 million people this year, up 91 percent from the year before, according to industry watcher SuperData Research. Even sports channel ESPN has joined in, with its magazine publishing its first e-sports issue this month featuring US National Football League player Marshawn Lynch on the cover, accompanied by stories about video games, including a profile of a League of Legends superstar player from South Korea. The company also partners with game makers to stream the world's most popular tournaments online on its ESPN3 channel. Meanwhile, some of the world's largest tech companies are jumping in. Both Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 can stream games live to the Internet. Amazon-owned Twitch and Google-owned YouTube, which last week launched a dedicated gaming hub, dominate e-sports viewership. In 2012, Major League Gaming, a sports league launched in 2002, started its own streaming service as well. "Our mission from day one was to turn e-sports into a top five professional sport," said Mike Sepso, a co-founder of Major League Gaming. It began with games like Microsoft's Halo space-age shooting game, Activision Blizzard's strategy game StarCraft and battles in the online fantasy game World of Warcraft. But in the last decade, a new class of games -- such as League of Legends from Riot Games and Dota 2, shorthand for Defense of the Ancients, from Valve -- have  HP Pavilion g6-2124sz keyboard  become the bedrock of the industry. You watch these games from a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, as opposed to Halo's first-person perspective, where players battle to eventually take control of their opponent's base. They're typically played on PCs, and their audience has become massive. The world championship for League of Legends in 2013 drew 32 million viewers, more than all the people who watched the final episodes of TV shows "The Sopranos," "24" and "Breaking Bad" combined. Gamers are attracted to e-sports for the same reason baseball fans watch the World Series, and football fans tune in to the Super Bowl: They love to watch the world's best players compete at the games they love. The tournaments themselves, which mostly serve as a form of marketing and a way to connect with players, have begun attracting massive prize pools. Valve's Dota 2 International, the biggest e-sports competition in the world, started in 2012 with a $1.6 million prize pool and more than 750,000 monthly active players. Two years later, the player base has grown by 1,200 percent, to more than 9.6 million monthly players. The 2014 prize pool was nearly $11 million. E-sports is not without its growing pains, however. For one, the top games played in competition changes every few years, forcing gamers to practice for a mind-numbing number of hours to become proficient enough to compete. "That entire portfolio of games has turned over completely about three, four times in our 12 years," Sepso said. The teams also work at different levels, e-sports fans say. In countries like South Korea, where e-sports is followed so closely there are TV channels devoted to it, professional gamers have a cadre for support. League of Legends, StarCraft and Dota 2 athletes have agents and trainers that oversee diets and injuries like wrist strain. In the US, where e-sports are not as mature, there isn't as much support, at least not yet. Riot's League of Legends is among the most played video games on the planet, amassing a huge fanbase willing to watch professional players compete on a global stage. "Unfortunately right now, you have tens or even hundreds of people trying to pick at the bones of these e-sports athletes and there not a whole lot to go around," said Jeremy Monroe, the chief customer officer of game analytics firm Ninja Metrics. "Playing 14, 16 hours a day -- that's not sustainable, even for a teenager." Of course, there is also the stigma around competitive game play, many years after the initial outrage over putting poker tournaments on TV and including extreme sports in the Olympics. Even ESPN's own president, John Skipper, has expressed frustration that games are being shown next to football and basketball. "It's not a sport -- it's a competition. Chess is a competition. Checkers is a competition," he said at a media conference in New York last September. The definition of a sport   Toshiba Satellite A655-s6093 fan  aside, these growing pains are expected. The next step is to create leagues of players like the US' National Basketball Association and NFL, both bodies that took decades to reach the level of success they have today. "Developing a pro sports league doesn't happen in Internet time," Sepso said. In the meantime, Nintendo said it plans to hold another World Championship next year.

Spoilers, ahoy! If you haven't seen all 50 episodes of the HBO series "Game of Thrones," some or all of it will likely be spoiled for you below. When you play the "Game of Thrones," you win or you die. But by now, fans of the show have come to realize that even if you win, you'll still probably die. And so I watched the Season 5 finale on Sunday night with an ever-growing sense of dread. For almost a full hour, the show's writers doled out formidable heaps of justice to the characters who have done the most sinning (or been the most sinned against) in the last half-decade. The parents who sacrificed their own daughter in the name of unproven magic just last week will not make it to Season 6; Arya Stark crosses another name off her hit list  COMPAQ Presario CQ60-210EM keyboard  with a flourish; Sansa Stark finds another unreliable savior in the nick of time; and Cersei Lannister is finally forced to atone for being just generally terrible in an equally terrible and brutal scene. And then came the sucker punch we all knew was coming -- though not in what form -- in the season's final minutes: several puncture wounds to the gut and chest of Jon Snow, who is shown apparently bleeding to death in the final shot. Predictably, the Internet immediately commenced losing its collective mind over this tragic ending. There are plenty of theories rooted in online forums, in George R.R. Martin's books and in interviews with cast and crew that suggest Jon is not really dead, or that he'll be resurrected later, or that his soul has been magically transposed into the body of Ghost, his dire wolf, or that he'll become a White Walker. And those are just for starters. Or, as actor Kit Harington himself told Entertainment Weekly: "I'm dead. I'm not coming back next season." With the show now seemingly more than willing and able to deviate from the books on which it's based, it's entirely possible that Jon Snow's fate hasn't even been decided yet by those creative deities who hold his life in the palm of their word processors. As such, I'm less concerned with guessing games and more interested in taking stock of how many items from my wish list for the season finale came true Sunday night. Remarkably, after the show I found that nearly half of my wishes were granted from a list that was only about half serious anyway. Cersei got the comeuppance she deserves, Arya had her vengeance on another name from her  HP Pavilion g7-2001sl fan  list (although at a cost), and a few wishes were half-granted -- Brienne of Tarth took out Stannis Baratheon and it seems likely she's on her way to rescue an escaped Sansa Stark. And of course, Jon Snow looks to have suffered a not entirely meaningless, but certainly undignified, death. The Season 5 finale also left us with plenty to wish for. The house of Lannister is essentially broken, with Tywin dead, Cersei stripped of her power and her daughter, Myrcella, dying in her uncle-father Jaime's arms, just after acknowledging her knowledge of her incestuous conception. The Lannisters seem to have spent much of this season paying off their debts, to be sure. With Tyrion now the lone ascendant Lannister sibling, we can look forward to watching him attempt to run Mereen from behind the scenes, which I still hope could lead to fulfillment of a few more of my wishes -- seeing Peter Dinklage ride on a dragon with the Khaleesi before an epic turn to the dark side in the Season 6 finale. (Yes, I think George R.R. could take a few pointers from George Lucas on this one.) Looking forward further In a very brief exchange only made more significant by the "Previously on..." recap at the beginning of the show, Cersei meets a new member of the Kingsguard, Ser Robert Strong. Scenes from the recap strongly hint that Ser Strong -- who has conveniently taken a vow of silence -- is actually the re-animated body of "The Mountain," Gregor Clegane. With the addition of this Frankenstein's monster, the only fantasy trope the series still lacks is vampires. Separated from her dragon, which may understand English but still remains mopey, Daenerys seems to have a more uncertain future (and dirtier clothes) than she's been faced with for a few seasons now. The same goes for the humiliated red witch Melisandre and the newly blind Arya Stark, who played out one of the show's most intriguing new story lines in Season 5. On the other end of fortune, things are looking up for Sansa, Reek, Brienne and Pod. And we also were treated to a reunion of one of the show's most enjoyable bantering duos: Tyrion and fellow schemer, Lord Varys, aka "The Spider." (Seriously, somebody give those two a podcast like, last year.) But all this is cold comfort for the heartbreaking final scene and the prospect of facing a Season 6 in which the Night's Watch will go on sans Samwell Tarley and Jon Snow. That leads me to conclude with my theory on what will really become of the Lord Commander. Clearly Jon Snow is Lenovo G460A-ITH fan  destined to fill the saga's one remaining gap and become its first vampire. Or maybe he'll be resurrected and jump a shark on water skis.

If there was any lingering question about what Bethesda's  ACER Aspire 6920G-834G32Bn fan  most important intellectual property is, the publisher put that to rest in front of a sold-out Dolby Theatre auditorium in Los Angeles on Sunday. During a one-hour press conference that featured a robust slate of triple-A games that any publisher would envy, including Doom and Dishonored 2, it was Fallout 4 that closed the curtain. One key problem for Bethesda is that the inherent bliss of Fallout games -- their wondrous sense of freedom to draw your own narrative path -- is inevitably diminished when portrayed through cinematic and choreographed trailers. Which is why Todd Howard, the executive producer of the game, opened his demonstration with a long montage of concept art, as opposed to in-game footage. The promise is obvious; Bethesda wants you to understand how much of its world will be available when the final build ships. (The Fallout 4 release date is November 10, if you're asking). This is a far more personal Fallout, with your hero given a voice, a dog to keep you company, and quite tragically, a wife and child to lose after the bomb lands. The company appears to still be a little shy about showing the world in forensic detail, however, with its gameplay demonstration frequently skipping between scenes, and jumping from first-person to third-person perspectives. A wise PR move, certainly, with the game's graphics under scrutiny from some quarters, but not exactly an answer to those critics either. Bethesda's focus of the pitch was not graphical fidelity, of course, but scale and possibility. Howard referred to Fallout 4's Boston wasteland as "an enormous, dynamic world, where you can create what you want, and do what you want." Driving the point home, he stated: "Player freedom remains our absolute number  HP Pavilion dv6-6b12ss keyboard  one goal." Predictable press conference hyperbole, you might have thought, until Howard listed a remarkable number of new options available to players. From wide-ranging apparel choices, to hundreds of possibilities to modify your weapons, Fallout 4 wants players to make more choices than ever. If you want, you could even build your own homes and buildings. You can find jetpacks, ride helicopters, and can even play 8-bit games on your new Pip-Boy. It even comes with a Pip-Boy app for your Android or iOS smartphone--which Howard proudly proclaimed is "the best f**king second-screen experience" out there. For those interested, here's a closer look at the Pip-Boy app and the real-life Pip-Boy included in the Fallout 4 special edition. Meanwhile, vast volumes of in-game audio have been recorded (apparently, a thousand names were recorded alone just so your child's name can be uttered). Many of those recordings will not be heard, with the game utilizing a Mass Effect-esque conversation tree system. This is a natural evolution of Fallout 3, with every single element expanded upon, sometimes to an unbelievable degree. But it also appears to be a far more personal Fallout, with your hero given a voice, a dog to keep you company, and quite tragically, a wife and child to lose after the bomb lands Fallout 4 has been in development for four years, and while some may lament the slightly awkward animations, you really can sense how much love and energy went into building this world. Boston is a vulgar wasteland, but it's  Gateway NV56R06M motherboard  Bethesda's vulgar wasteland, and there's nothing half-hearted about it. Get up-to-date on Fallout 4, Doom, Dishonored 2, and more with our in-depth Bethesda press conference news roundup.

It's about to go from virtual to very, very real. The video game industry is embracing virtual  SONY VPC-EH2HFX keyboard  reality like never before. Major game makers from Sony to Microsoft and Ubisoft are preparing new products based on the emerging technology even as tech giants including Facebook, Google, Samsung and HTC have plunged into the virtual waters. Now the industry's Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 -- the highest-profile video game conference of the year -- will launch the technology into people's living rooms. As many as 27 exhibitors will showcase virtual-reality products, up from six last year, according to the expo's organizer, the Entertainment Software Association. What's more, the conference is sold out (it has not always been so), and it attracted 50 more exhibitors than it did last year. "It's been a really fabulous shot in the arm," said Mike Gallagher, head of the ESA, speaking of virtual reality's impact on the market. "We're months away from being in the marketplace and in consumers' hands." But virtual reality could do more than give an economic boost to video game makers. It could also deliver another leg of growth to the broader tech industry. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says VR could eventually become our primary mode of interacting with computers. Movie makers, television producers and musicians say it could transform how we experience entertainment. "It's this huge new medium that people have only started to imagine where you could go with it," said Rob Coneybeer, managing director of Shasta Ventures, which led a $4 million investment last year in VR company Survios. One thing that drew him to the technology is its potential to place players smack in the middle of a 3D world, as action literally swirls around them. "People's excitement is well founded." Without question, Oculus --the virtual reality company Facebook bought for $2 billion last year -- will be one of the most prominent game makers on the show floor. The company made consumers care about VR after unveiling its first prototypes three years ago. Since then, it's been a virtual march of VR game makers, as companies including Samsung and Google have either revealed upcoming products or talked about their   HP Pavilion dv7-3180us fan  research efforts. Microsoft, maker of the Xbox video game console and the Windows software that powers most of the world's PCs, on Thursday announced a partnership with Oculus to play Xbox games on the headset. "Oculus had such a head start," said Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox group. "It's good for Windows, and it's good for Xbox." Sony said it will launch its VR headset, called Project Morpheus, next year. Designed for the PlayStation, the device will work with accessories such as the wandlike motion controllers Sony released in 2010. Sony is expected to announce new games at the expo and to offer details about games that will be available when the headset launches. Oculus and Microsoft will be at the show as well, demonstrating their respective efforts. HTC and Valve, however, said they won't be showing off their Vive headset. Ubisoft, maker of the popular Assassin's Creed franchise of adventure games, has said it's working on virtual reality titles, but hasn't provided any more details. Other top game makers like Electronic Arts are researching the technology, though they haven't made public commitments. Still, it's unclear if customers will buy these products. The game industry failed to sell VR to consumers two decades ago, and has had a mixed success introducing technology to the mainstream. "People have only started to imagine where you could go with it." Rob Coneybeer, managing director of Shasta Ventures On the plus side, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 helped to popularize high-definition televisions, and Nintendo's Wii introduced consumers to controllers that sense motion, allowing them to make a swing in the real world and watch a tennis player strike the ball on screen. But the industry couldn't convince consumers to buy 3D televisions, despite a massive push from both the gaming and TV industries. And not all video game makers have voiced support for VR, prompting some of the most successful developers and titles to stay clear of the devices for now. And many question the long-term effect the technology (known for causing nausea) could have on our brains and bodies, a concern that's been raised by the US Army. Still, Gallagher says E3 will be a hotbed  HP Pavilion dv7-4325sr motherboard  of attention-getting VR products and demos. "The buildup wasn't as large" as with 3D, he said. "This seems quite different."

Microsoft's super-soldier Master Chief, from the venerable Halo game series, will have a busy schedule on Monday. That's because the software company and video game console maker will kick off Electronic Entertainment Expo, the  HP PAVILION G6-1B81CA motherboard  game industry's largest annual trade show, with a press conference dedicated to Xbox. The company will devote much of the show to Halo 5: Guardians, one of the most anticipated games of the year. It launches in October. E3 serves as one of the best opportunities for Microsoft to grab gamers' attention for the next Halo game, as well as set the tone for its Xbox One game console. The Xbox One has finally found its footing with consumers over the last year thanks to aggressive price cuts and a more robust game lineup. Much of that progress has been making up for time lost against the competition. Before launching the console in November 2013, Microsoft faced heavy criticism for shifting away from game playing and toward television, with a large focus on cable box integration and other media capabilities. It didn't help when the company attempted to impose new restrictions on how players connected the console to the Internet, requiring a sign-on once a day to play games, and limiting how people could lend games to a friend or sell them back to a retailer. Many of those policies were nixed leading up to the launch. Microsoft has spent the time since rebuilding the Xbox's image under the leadership of Phil Spencer, the former head of Microsoft's in-house game production team. Spencer shifted the Xbox division back to more serious game-playing, even as he made tough decisions about the platform itself, such as making the Kinect motion camera a separate accessory. He's also been candid in outlining where the Xbox One has needed to improve -- including such as making it easier for developers to create games -- and where the company had strayed from its mission. After Sony's PlayStation 4 handily beat the Xbox One in US retail sales for more than 12 straight months, Microsoft managed to inch ahead in December 2014 thanks to a $50 price cut that put the console at $350. That effort has paid off: Sales of Xbox hardware in May were up 81 percent from the same time a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group. But maintaining that momentum isn't a given. Sony remains an industry leader in promoting the best and most promising games from independent developers, like the highly anticipated No Man's Sky, a space exploration title, and the upcoming puzzle game The Witness from indie superstar Jonathan Blow. While Microsoft is expected to give more airtime on Monday to indie developers, it still lags behind Sony. Sony has also secured high-profile deals with game makers to bring exclusive game add-ons to the PlayStation. These include special maps and weapons for the space shooter game Destiny, which Xbox owners still don't have access to. These  HP Pavilion g7-1237dx keyboard  exclusive deals remain a powerful force in the console industry, where deciding which platform to choose often boils down to which one your friends play and what platform delivers the most for your money. Microsoft also seemed to be on the sidelines of the virtual-reality race. That changed Thursday, when it announced a surprise partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus VR that will bundle Xbox One controllers with the Oculus Rift when the headset ships next spring. Xbox One games will be also playable in a virtual home theater thanks to Windows streaming technology now being developed to bridge the PC and the Xbox platforms. Microsoft will talk about these and other developments Monday when it gives us a snapshot of Xbox's present and future. Heading into the event, here are key themes to look out for. Halo 5: Guardians front and center This year's E3 marks the moment Microsoft can flaunt Halo as the biggest strength of the Xbox One platform. The sweeping epic space opera remains the closest analog to Star Wars in the video game world. The exploits of Master Chief as he participates in intergalactic warfare still rank among the most iconic gaming experiences in the industry, alongside the likes of Nintendo's Super Mario, Electronic Arts' Madden football and Take-Two Interactive's Grand Theft Auto. Halo 5: Guardians marks the second major Halo installment made by Microsoft's in-house studio, 343 Industries, instead of series' creator Bungie. The studio delivered a hit with Halo 4, proving it can develop successful Halo games and setting the franchise up for another trilogy of titles. Yet Halo 5 marks an especially pivotal moment for the franchise. Microsoft and 343 bear the responsibility of pushing Halo forward while remaining loyal to the game's fans. That presents a challenge given the rise of video games as online services that gamers spend months and even years playing. Whether Halo 5 can fit the mold of a modern shooter game has yet to be seen. The title will feature a new playable protagonist named Jameson Locke -- who doubles as an Master Chief's antagonist. The title's dueling storylines have been the focus of a large-scale marketing campaign dubbed "Hunt the Truth," and Microsoft is likely to chat up the narrative's mysteries on Monday. Other games expected to make an appearance at the press conference will be the next installment of Activision's popular Call of Duty shooter Black Ops 3, a new Forza racing game and the sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider reboot, now an Xbox One exclusive title. Xbox One, meet Windows 10 Though its Xbox division is often thought of as separate from the rest of the software maker's business, Microsoft this year made it clear it wants to integrate its game console with the greater Windows family. Microsoft's Windows 10 arrives on July 29 -- and Xbox One will reap the benefits of Microsoft's most powerful software. The company will install Windows 10 directly onto the game console in an over-the-air update later this fall, and an Xbox app will let players access key parts of the platform on PCs. "Microsoft for a number of years hasn't paid attention to PC games," said Brian Blau, an analyst with research firm Gartner. That's allowed the company Valve, with its online Steam store, to step in as the go-to destination for PC gamers. Microsoft's Spencer admitted that at the Game Developers Conference in March, saying Microsoft had lost its way with the PC The benefits of having Xbox One running Windows are plenty, Microsoft says. Some games will support a cross-buy feature, which will allow you to purchase a game on a PC and receive a free copy of the same title on Xbox, and vice versa. Select titles will also be updated with cross-play support, letting players on PCs engage online in multiplayer activities with gamers on Xbox One. Because Windows 10 is designed to run on any device, Microsoft says Xbox games can be configured as so-called universal apps. That means developers will be able to create one game that can be easily tweaked to move from Xbox to PC to Windows smartphones and Surface tablets. And for the first time, Xbox One owners will be able to stream games to a PC, where players can plug in an Xbox controller. This will prove especially interesting with the Oculus Rift VR headset, which will come equipped with the Xbox One controller. When hooked up to a PC running Windows 10, the Oculus Rift can be used to play any Xbox One game on a virtual home theater, opening up the possibility that some of Xbox One games, like Halo 5 for instance, may be optimized for VR's immersive style of play. By offering gamers the flexibility to play games wherever they choose, Microsoft is positioning the Xbox as a wide-reaching platform for Internet services that extends to any device, all powered by its flagship Windows software. The strategy could "potentially help shift the tide back to Microsoft," said Blau.  Toshiba Satellite L305-SP6914C keyboard   may not shift the tide back to its Xbox console, he added, but it could position the company to be as important in the living room as it is on the PC. "That could be really interesting."

I love handheld game systems. I went to summer camp with a stack of Nintendo Game & Watches. Then I moved onto the Game Boy, Game Gear, Game Boy Color, Nintendo DS, PSP, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita. (I skipped the Lynx.) These little portable powerhouses always felt like magic to me. Maybe that's why portable gaming has been something I've felt so personally attached to. Last year, I reviewed and loved  HP Pavilion g6-1004sv keyboard  both the Nintendo 3DS XL and latest Sony PlayStation Vita. I recommended that people buy them, and I still think they have a lot of bang for the buck. This year, I'm no longer sure where their future is anymore. As we head into yet another E3 -- the game industry's annual trade show, which takes place in Los Angeles next week -- I've been thinking a lot about the 3DS and Vita. They're less exciting than they were a year ago. Or the year before that. No one seems to be talking about them. Big, exciting new games are few and far between. It's all about the smartphone. Serious gamers hate this argument. "Shut up -- mobile games suck." I understand this. Some mobile games are annoying. The touchscreen controls still aren't as responsive as good old hard buttons and gamepads. But mobile is the king. Phones are the new computers. Phones do everything. Phones get larger, better, more versatile.With every passing year, I take fewer devices in my bag. All I usually need is an extra battery pack...for my phone. And they also can be popped into VR headsets, doubling as the "screen" and the processor. The Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard, two of the coolest pieces of portable tech I've tried in years, are powered by phones. Sure, they're not as powerful as bigger VR platforms like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but they allow a lighter, wireless freedom you can't get with those PC-tethered devices. Virtual reality is a big, oncoming wave of potential, and phones are its mobile engine. The Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita, despite getting off to underwhelming starts, have had surprisingly good runs as high-quality mini game consoles. But unlike the role of the Nintendo DS and PSP before the iPhone, these are hobby devices. For kids, they might be fun toys. For video game obsessives, they have some specialized charms. But those charms are diminishing. I'd be hard-pressed to cite a game on either platform that I'm anxiously looking forward to. The Nintendo 3DS just got a redesign this year in the form of the "New Nintendo 3DS XL," an awkward name for a slight revision with a few new buttons and improved hardware. It's still got two screens, a clamshell design, buttons, and access to the same library of games as its forebears. And, while it's better, it's somehow less exciting than before. I feel like I want to play games on the 3DS, but I take it with me and just play iPhone games instead: Hearthstone, which sucks up most of my time, or many others: You Must Build A Boat, Geometry Wars 3, or...more Hearthstone. Or I read a book. Or watch a movie. Or do the other things my phone can do. The PlayStation Vita is more like a phone -- and has apps and a touchscreen -- but the games it plays best, lately, are  Toshiba Satellite A655-s6093 fan  cross-play indie games that you can also play on the PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 3. It's a great little system, but at this point it's past its third birthday, while phones evolve every year. Nintendo and Sony both dreamed up some great ideas, maybe even underappreciated ones, when it comes to on-the-go gaming. The 3DS actually pulled off glasses-free 3D and has a lot of clever local-network social gaming. The Wii U and PlayStation Vita's approaches to streaming games to a second screen anticipated the multidevice present we're in now. Sony has done an admirable job offering games that cross-play between game consoles and the smaller Vita -- in other words, you pay one price for a game, and you get it on Vita, PS3 and/or PS4. But both have made missteps. Sony designed the Vita as a quasi-smart device, yet also pursued and abandoned the weird PlayStation Mobile platform, which tried to serve up games that played on phones. And those phones, like 2011's Xperia Play, were badly designed. Nintendo never found a way to comfortably connect the Wii U console and 3DS, instead creating two parallel platforms. Wii U's large GamePad wasn't portable beyond the console -- the tablet-like controller can play a few games, but only while near the console itself -- while the 3DS remained largely disconnected from the console...even now, despite sharing a few cross-playing games and Mii avatars. Sony or Nintendo might make a game device/phone/tablet, or something that's a console as well as a handheld. Or, maybe, even a virtual-reality portable (Nintendo already tried this years ago, don't forget.) But I doubt either of them will ever make a dedicated video game handheld like the 3DS or Vita again. Single-function game portables aren't the way of the future. I'd love to see Nintendo or Sony figure out a way to make their on-the-go game solutions better or more revolutionary, but I don't think it'll happen easily. The 3DS and Vita were already the chance to do that, and both look like they're losing steam. Where next? Nintendo's already announced that it's dipping into mobile games. Will they be Super Mario 3D Land, or Zelda: A Link Between Worlds? No, they'll probably be more like Pushmo, or Animal Crossing, or free-to-play Pokemon. But every other major game manufacturer has entered mobile and stayed there: EA, Capcom, Konami, Square Enix, even Microsoft -- I don't need to go on. Sony already has deep roots in mobile. The Vita, over time, has become just another screen that plays games. The Vita's smart new role as a handheld to play a collection of games you can might already own on your PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 3 also diminishes its importance: why not offer these games on phones via a shared PlayStation app, too? (You'd still need to buy the home console and the app, so Sony would still have a nice revenue stream.) Looking at Microsoft, Sony and  Acer Aspire V3-551-8823 fan  Nintendo and their headng-into-E3 strategies, the upcoming road seems to be more about diversifying how you play your games, and what peripherals you use to play them. VR, TV streaming, expansion onto Windows PCs. Handheld game systems could be one more part of that strategy -- but these specialized, closed-off systems like the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita no longer feel like the way in. I'd love to see handheld gaming reinvented. But, I don't see any company discussing it. That's because mobile apps are the juggernaut, and VR is the new big part of that world. In order for gaming console-makers to succeed, they'll probably need to cross over, meet mobile halfway. I want my PlayStation and Nintendo games, but I'm not sure I need or even want a Nintendo or Sony handheld anymore. I'm a phone gamer now. I just don't want to admit it. And you probably are, too.

The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles is known for its over the top showcases and press events. Most of those are aimed at living room game consoles and the disc-based games that play on them, but for the past couple of years, PC gaming has been experiencing something of a renaissance at E3, as it's known. That's partly because the current  SONY Vaio VGN-AR48C motherboard  generation of consoles, the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U, have largely failed to become the must-have devices some of their predecessors were. Gaming computers have stepped in to fill that void, offering extreme flexibility, with games available from many sources (including budget-friendly digital download services like Steam and Gog.com), hardware configurations that run from under $500 to $5,000 or more, and -- even in mid-range PCs -- performance and graphics that the Xbox One and PS4 struggle to match. AMD makes a big play AMD, a maker of both processors and graphics cards, is making a major PC gaming push at E3 by putting on a separate event called The PC Gaming Show. Co-produced with the publication PC Gamer, the show will be held a few blocks from E3's Los Angeles Convention Center location at the Belasco Theater in downtown LA. The event is on Tuesday, June 16, and will feature PC game demos and developers, and potentially some new PC hardware from AMD. AMD's GPU rival, Nvidia, also has some new technology that will be found in several products at E3. G-Sync is a system for allowing graphics cards and computer monitors to talk to each other, making sure each new frame of animation is sent to the display only when needed, thus preventing an on-screen artifact known as tearing. On the desktop setups we've tested it on, the effect is impressive, making games look faster and smoother. Now it's coming to laptops, a move first announced at the Computex show in Taipei earlier this month. At E3, we'll get our first chance to see and demo some of these G-Sync laptops from boutique PC system builders up close. Steam Machines are finally here, almost Since late 2013 we've been hearing about a new PC-based gaming platform from Valve, the company behind the Steam online game store (as well as games such as Portal and Half-Life). The Steam Machine hardware/software combination, including a clever new controller, has been delayed several times, but Valve recently announced that some Steam Machines  HP Pavilion g7-1237dx keyboard  will be available as early as October. One key partner, Dell, will have its Alienware Steam Machine at E3, and we look forward to trying it out. We've previously reviewed the Windows-based version of this machine, called the Alienware Alpha. A big year for PC games Aside from the powerful hardware and extreme customization available from PC gaming hardware, the other major draw is massive library of playable games. PC ports of console hits, original games from indie developers, and decades worth of classic games are all available and dwarf the number of games available for consoles. As 2015 has so far been an anemic year for big console games, much of the attention has been PC-centric, such as the excellent PC versions of The Witcher 3 and Grand Theft Auto V. The upcoming sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, an excellent strategy game, has recently been announced as a PC exclusive, and the show's most anticipated game, Bethesda's Fallout 4, will likely follow the lead of other ambitious open-world role-playing games and offer a better experience on PCs, including better graphics and customization, and tools for gamer-made add-on content. Virtual reality is almost a reality And lastly, let's not forget that many of the big players in  ACER Aspire V5-571-6726 keyboard  these very early days of VR, including Oculus and HTC/Valve, are preparing launch products that not only require PCs, but very powerful PCs at that. We don't expect any additional new details from Oculus, following the company's revealing pre-E3 press conference, but the Oculus booth will likely be one of the more popular ones at the show.

Forget genetics. The field that InGen -- the fictional corporation that built Jurassic Park -- really excels in is PR. Two decades after its deadly theme park claimed the lives of several of its first visitors, the dinosaur-filled island has been successfully converted into a thriving family attraction. And they didn't even have to change the logo. That attraction is Jurassic World, the setting of Colin Trevorrow's sequel to Steven Spielberg's 1993 classic. Think Disneyland, but more educational, more expensive and with a marginally higher risk of being eaten alive. There's only one problem in this leafy,  Toshiba Satellite C855-s5350n fan  money-spinning island paradise -- dinosaurs are old-hat these days. Young park attendee Zach (Nick Robinson), who's visiting Jurassic World with his little brother Gray (Ty Simpkins), would rather stare at his smartphone than watch a mosasaurus devour a shark. As the kids' hyper-organised aunt, park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) explains, consumers want "bigger, louder. More teeth." Watch 'Jurassic Park' reimagined as a retro video game Get ready for 'Jurassic World' by raptor-proofing your home NFL player Richard Sherman stars in fake 'Jurassic World' trailer As such, while infants ride baby triceratops and parents guzzle Starbucks, behind the scenes the park's boffins have cooked up something that's certain to sell tickets -- a genetically warped, all-new dinosaur that's entirely too big, too loud and too toothy for anyone's good. Raptor trainer and all-around man-of-action Owen (Chris Pratt) can only shake his head at his paymasters' hubris, then hop on his motorbike and try to save some lives as the inevitable carnage unfolds. If your mind starts to wander during one of the quieter moments in "Jurassic World,"  TOSHIBA 99.N5682.A01 Keyboard  you'll realise that the movie is trying to have its cake and eat it, wagging a disapproving finger at our consumer lust for bigger, better, glossier attractions through the medium of a blockbuster sequel that draws you in with the promise of exactly that -- a beast bigger, toothier and possessing of more deadly cunning than any dinosaur you've seen on-screen before. Similarly, while there's plenty of pleasure to be had from seeing frame-filling dinosaurs lunging through scenery, diehard fans of the original movie might be dismayed at the film's treatment of its scaly stars. The dinos in "Jurassic Park" were portrayed as a force of nature, akin to an earthquake or a tsunami -- something to be escaped or survived rather than defeated. "Jurassic World," on the other hand, is all-out dinosaur war, with more blood, bullets and all manner of outlandish cross-species brawls. It's entertaining viewing, but it never feels remotely as smart as its source material. There are a few imperfections on the surface level, too. A total devotion to occasionally underwhelming CGI, rampant product placement (a trip to the Samsung Innovation Lab, anyone?) and an ill-judged, leery early scene between Pratt and Dallas Howard combine to ensure you'll never quite relax and lose yourself in the action. These gripes are balanced by some extremely tense and frightening scenes, moments of real levity and a stand-out performance from Bryce Dallas Howard, who emerges as the real star of the show. There's also Michael Giacchino's swelling score  HP pavilion g7-2223sz motherboard  that lends dino encounters an appropriate sense of gravitas, and plenty of nods to the first movie, some subtle, some not so much. "Jurassic World" is certainly an enjoyable, adrenalised romp then, but for all the rowboat-sized jaws on show, it's a little lacking in bite.

Apple wants to control every aspect of your life -- as long as you choose to let it. The company on Monday showed off the newest updates to the software  SONY VPC-EB19GL keyboard  running on its iPhones and iPads, Macs and Apple Watches. One of the key characteristics of Apple's operating system releases over the past couple years -- including iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan revealed Monday at its developer conference -- is how well the software makes its devices work together. Last year's debut of Continuity and Handoff tied the iPhone and Mac computer more closely together, letting people start an email on their smartphone and finish it on their computer or even answer phone calls on their Macs. This year, Apple showed more ways it will extend its reach into our homes and cars, as well as how we listen to music and how we pay for goods. It looks like Apple is bringing a whole new level of interconnectivity to our lives. But here's the catch: if you really want everything to work seamlessly, you'll have to go all in on the Apple ecosystem. And that doesn't just mean buying an iPhone and MacBook. You'll have to look for smart-home products that work with its HomeKit software, drive a CarPlay-compatible automobile and even choose its Apple Music streaming service. The company's message is clear: it's Apple's world; you're just living in it. With Apple, "you're either all in or you're all out," said Eric Shapiro, a former Apple executive and current CEO of ArcTouch, a San Francisco app development studio that counts NBC's "Today Show" and Disney among its clients. "Where Apple will fail is if it doesn't work and if it's too hard to use." As the battle for the control of your connected life heats up, Apple's strategy stands in contrast with the other tech giants. While Apple is rallying behind its own products, software and services, Google and Microsoft have embraced a cross-platform world where their services work on virtually anything. That Apple can get away with such a siloed approach is testament to the strength of its early decision to control both the hardware and software aspects of its products and services. And for Apple, everything it does in software goes back to selling more of its devices -- those iPhones, iPads, Macs and now Apple Watches that have made it the most profitable public company ever. Not everything about Apple is locked into its own ecosystem. The biggest news from Apple's keynote Monday was a subscription music service re-emerging after last year's $3 billion acquisition of Beats. Apple changed  HP Pavilion dv7-3180us fan  how consumers bought music with the launch of the iTunes Music Store in 2003, and it hopes to do it again with Apple Music, a $10-a-month subscription streaming service much like Spotify. But unlike other Apple services, Apple Music will be available on Android too -- the first time the company has created an app for another mobile operating system.   For Apple, offering its music app on Android isn't just a continuation of Beats' prior strategy. Instead, it's a calculated decision by Apple to hold onto an area it has long controlled -- music. It's also a realization by the company that to truly compete in streaming music, it needs to be on other platforms, not just iOS. "If and when possible, they (Apple) do try to stick to their own ecosystem," said Jonas Damon, executive creative director at frog, a global product strategy and design firm that works with clients such as General Electric, Intel and Nike. "When you're playing in something like that automotive world, it's easier to partition yourself....But music is one of those areas that is just so pervasive, I think it's impossible. " There have been other instances where Apple has gone cross platform. Apple long has offered its QuickTime video player on Windows PCs, iCloud works with Microsoft's computer operating system, and the 2003 introduction of iTunes on Windows -- revealed by then-CEO Steve Jobs in front of a "Hell froze over" sign -- is what helped turn Apple into a music and MP3 player powerhouse. Apple also revealed in March that its ResearchKit software -- which was designed to help medical professionals build apps and collect data about patients in an easy, consistent manner -- would be open source, as would Swift, the coding language used to make Mac and iOS apps. "We think Swift is the next big programming language," Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, said during Monday's keynote. "We think Swift should be everywhere and used by everyone." But as Apple begins to more closely tie its products together, don't expect it to start opening its arms to fully embrace Android and Windows. Apple's core pitch is that its products work better together. Even though Apple Music will be on Android, there undoubtedly will be plenty of features that make the service better on an iPhone or iPad. For instance, Siri, Apple's digital voice assistant, will learn that you like to work out in the morning and what type of music you listen to. The next time you plug in your headphones at 7 a.m., Siri  Toshiba Satellite A655-s6093 fan  will immediately start playing an upbeat workout mix. It's unlikely that the Google Now voice assistant will integrate with Apple Music in the same way.

Back in the good old days of... May 2014, 1080 by 1920 pixels (also referred to as 1080p) was the screen resolution associated with high-end smartphones that weren't the iPhone. Everyone seemed to be happy with it as the high pixel count and density sufficed for every task and need. But then came phones like the LG G3 and the Oppo Find 7, which broke the 1080p barrier with their 1440 by 2560-pixel (Quad HD) displays. All of a sudden, 1080p screens weren't sharp  HP Pavilion dv4-1090es keyboard  enough. It was Quad HD screens that produced the sharpest, most detailed image one could possibly see on a smartphone screen. Or so we were told. Today, a year later, there are no less than a dozen smartphone models rocking Quad HD screens – from the exotic HTC One M9+ and Meizu MX 4 Pro to the hugely popular Galaxy S6 and Galaxy Note 4 by Samsung. And their number is only going to rise in the foreseeable future. But honestly, does it have to? What's the practical benefit from having such an insanely pixel-dense display on your smartphone? And, in spite of what we're being convinced, can people actually see the difference between Quad HD and 1080p resolution on a smartphone screen of average size? In hopes of getting solid answers to these questions, we conducted our own testing here at the office, with our fellow colleagues in the role of guinea pigs test subjects. We asked them to look at a series of images of different resolutions, displayed on a Samsung Galaxy S6's 5.1-inch Quad HD screen. Then people had to say whether they could see any difference in detail or resolution. In theory, a slight difference was present, but was anyone going to notice it? For the purpose of our experiment, we scaled down seven high-res images twice – once to a resolution of 1440 by 2560 pixels and again to a size of 1080 by 1920 pixels – for a total of 14 images people had to compare. Then we loaded them in the Galaxy S6's image gallery. Participants were allowed to look at the pairs of pictures from as close of a distance as they desired, but were not allowed to zoom in. A couple of hours later, the votes were in and counted.   To complement the experiment results highlighted above, we conducted further testing using two smartphone screens of the same size instead of just one. A Samsung Galaxy S6 was shown to test subjects alongside our trusty Galaxy S5 with its "old-fashioned", 1080p screen. For the record, both smartphones were wrapped in paper, with nothing but their displays exposed, meaning that participants couldn't be biased by knowing which smartphones' screens they were looking at. In this particular test, both handsets had the same Quad HD-resolution images loaded in their galleries. The Galaxy S5, however, scaled down images to its native display resolution of 1080 by 1920 when displaying them, while the Galaxy S6 could fit all 1440 by 2560 pixels on its screen. Therefore, the latter was delivering a greater amount of visual information, at least on paper. Yet interestingly, only half of the people could tell. Out of the 26 participants in our second test, only 13 perceived the Galaxy S6's display as more detailed, judging by the images shown. Four people said they couldn't see a difference, and the other nine favored the display of the Galaxy S5. Yes, nine people said that the 1080 by 1920-pixel display on the S5 appeared  SONY Vaio VGN-BX740NS5 fan  more detailed to their eyes than the Galaxy S6's Quad HD screen, and that despite the latter's higher resolution. Mind you, most participants had to bring the screens unnaturally close to their eyes, much like they did in our previous test, before they could give an answer, be it right or wrong.   Whether or not Quad HD smartphone displays are necessary is a matter we discussed back in 2014, right after the LG G3 hit the shelves. Back then, we arrived at the conclusion that a Quad HD and a 1080p smartphone screen of average size look equally sharp and detailed from a regular viewing distance. Today, a year later, Quad HD smartphone screens might make sense having on a high-end tablet or on an exceptionally large phablet. On a smartphone of average size, however, a Quad HD-resolution display is overkill, and our testing reconfirms this statement. It just doesn't make any practical sense. Yes, some people can tell a Quad HD display from a 1080p one, but only after comparing the two resolutions with their nose stuck to the phone's screen, not in a typical usage scenario. What was quite surprising was that a third of the participants in our second test favored the Galaxy S5's display over the one on the Galaxy S6, even though the latter has a higher display resolution. But it is hard to say why, hence it is impossible to draw any solid conclusions based on this bit of information. We're assuming that these people had their eyes confused by the way the two screens displayed our test images. In particular, the screen on the Galaxy S5 appeared a tad more contrasty and colors on it were slightly more saturated compared to what the Galaxy S6 displayed. Whether our assumption is correct or not, it seems safe to say that what people perceive as higher in detail isn't only guided by the number of pixels the image is made of. But regardless of whether people can see the difference, Quad HD displays are only going to get more prevalent among smartphones, especially throughout the high-end portion of the spectrum. After all, a Quad HD screen makes a strong selling point – one that sets a next-generation smartphone apart from so many older models. Plus, they are something to brag with in front of your geeky buddies. And we have a feeling that the resolution race won't stop here, as 4K smartphone screens might not be far from launching. Perhaps their arrival will make people realize that cramming more pixels on a smartphone screen just doesn't make sense anymore? And that it is better to  HP Pavilion 15-p145ne fan  improve upon other aspects of a display instead, such as its top brightness and power consumption? We guess we'll have to wait and see.

What are the six most important, influential and iconic video games ever made? Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., Doom and World of  Toshiba Satellite A505-S6970 keyboard  Warcraft, it turns out. The Strong National Museum of Play, located in Rochester, NY, has long been dedicated to preserving various forms of childhood entertainment. It is home, for example, to the National Toy Hall of Fame, which includes the Rubik's Cube and the Slinky. The museum founded the World Video Game Hall of Fame this year, and Thursday it inducted its first class. The list includes Super Mario, a legendary Japanese game that cemented the console era when it was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. That was an easy pick, of course -- it's become such a cultural icon that at one point its characters were more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse. Other inductees included Tetris, the Soviet puzzle game concocted in June 1984 by artificial-intelligence researcher Alexey Pajitnov. There was also Pac-Man, one of the most popular arcade games of all time. Naturally, every one of these titles came after Atari's Pong, which was the first video game to break out among mainstream consumers after it was developed and released in 1972 by the California company. There were some unusual picks as well: Doom and World of Warcraft. Doom, developed by Id Software in 1993, helped create what is arguably the most successful video game genre in history: the first-person shooter. It was also a violent and often terrifying game -- you play a nameless soldier slaying demons that escaped from the gates of Hell -- though those elements helped influence future game developers' ability to imbue their titles with tone, style and other artistic elements. World of Warcraft, notable as one of the largest and most successful games played over the Internet, was not the first such Internet game. But it has become one of the most influential titles ever made. Since WoW, as it's called, was released in 2004, the game has become the highest-grossing title in history, thanks to added story lines over the years and the millions of subscribers who have paid a monthly fee to play the game. Even today, there are more than 7 million people still logging in to engross themselves in the fantasy universe. "Games become eligible for the World Video Game Hall of Fame by meeting four basic criteria," wrote John-Paul Dyson, the director of the museum's International Center for the History of Electronic Games. "They're iconic, have longevity, reach across international boundaries, and exert influence on the design and development of other games, on other forms of entertainment, or on popular culture and society." A committee of journalists, game historians and well-known names in the industry whittled down a list of 15 games to the six that would make up the first class. The finalists, HP Pavilion g7-1237dx keyboard  first announced in late April, included some important and memorable titles, like Rovio Entertainment's Angry Birds, the explosively popular physics-based mobile game that symbolized the moment smartphones became a formidable and lucrative gaming market, as well as the Electronic Arts soccer game FIFA, and the popular life simulation series, The Sims. Minecraft, the pixelated building game from developer Mojang, which Microsoft purchased last year for $2.5 billion, was a top contender as well. Ultimately, those titles didn't make the cut. Neither did the seminal adventure game The Legend of Zelda, the Japanese monster-catching phenomenon Pokémon, or the original arcade classic Space Invaders. Perhaps most disappointing to early game industry junkies who remember the Sega Genesis and its ubiquitous commercials that were punctuated by a man shouting "SEGA!" into the television, that console's key game, Sonic the Hedgehog, was also bumped out. And storied educational title The Oregon Trail? Apparently it didn't cross the finish line either, which may upset those who enjoyed watching family   TOSHIBA Satellite L755D-SP5178LM keyboard  members die from dysentery. But fear not, video game fans. There's always next year.

WWDC2015, once a year Apple. This year's WWDC may be described as, Apple's retreated to. Overall, they lack the hardware innovation, software upgrades, there are bright spots, but no killer application.  iOS9 support for 4S negligible Overall, the pre-session  HP Pavilion 15-n088sz keyboard  high hopes iOS9, whether you intended it? First, the new Siri can be used to change the scenario to suggest the activities carried out by the device, if you add an event in the calendar application, Siri will remind you ought to departure time, which is more like a reminder function. Intelligence has some upgrades, but the actual similar applications are not uncommon. In addition, iOS9 increase intelligent design, I prefer to call "anthropomorphic" design, such as when you pick up the iPhone's first time in the morning, it will automatically suggest the need to open the APP according to your daily habits. Browser search, mail and other historical usage records, will be recorded phone down and generate reminders. More intelligence reflected in the reminder and secondary sectors, such anthropomorphic design, more like a little soy sauce nanny Maybe split-screen multitasking is a relatively new idea of design, however, compared to the iPhone and iPad small screen, I do not know the best of scenarios based on what the application?   The greatest favor, perhaps support for iPhone4s and IPAD 2's. Apple announced: iPhone4s and iPad 2 as well as more devices are upgraded to iOS 9. However, we think about it, most of the early 4S with 8G and 16G-based. Space needed for the upgrade to iOS8 are stretched, not to mention the size of 1.3G iOS9 it? The so-called sincerity, I think may be negligible.   Watch OS 2: Cook's legendary long way off I was not optimistic about Apple Watch's. Why Apple fans, iPhone or iPad to give so much passion? Because, they are the perfect person, Steve Jobs, to create unique products. Obviously not perfect but Apple Watch, also not unique. At least, it will not make us bring amazing results. Of course, I have to say to eliminate the influence of Steve Jobs Cook on Apple. The best opportunity in Apple Watch. The  ACER Aspire 5250-0639 fan  products in the future can only be called Cook's legend. However, for the moment, this may have to wait.   The new WatchOS2 will bring more native apps Apple Watch. This includes more new dial, new features and interesting uses. On the whole, and the IOS release 9, like the lack of killer applications. Most features are icing on the cake, if not Jobs has created a strong bond of Apple users, it is difficult to speak these upgrades are successful 2.0. Perhaps more appropriately called the watch OS 1S. First, the desktop picture, Apple opened up a little bit right that allows users to put their pictures on the dial, and even works as a dial-lapse photography. This was seen as Apple's biggest sincerity of open (AndroidWear platform can customize the design of the dial), on the small screen in the confusion between, in fact, there is no practical significance. Second, the charge alarm clock, WatchOS2 that it could display the time in the charging time, but also joined the alarm function. This is to replace the old bedside alarm clock it? Difficult to understand, do not AppleWatch replace the iPhone yet? Your phone does not alarm you? Moreover, MOTO360 already can do it a little. Third, it can directly connect WIFI. Perhaps, until today many users do not buy Apple Watch, know that it is not connected to WIFI, is the need to rely on the iPhone. Well, this is a very useful upgrade, but pay attention to Apple Watch that little battery endurance is not able to continue to force. Fourth, smart home? Do you want to squeeze the future space mobile? In fact, I do not understand this point is that, as a remote control, a watch is it looks like a remote control than a cell phone? I think at this point, iPhone better opportunities. Fifth, native wristwatch. This  HP Pavilion dv9700 GT811AV motherboard  could be a future opening up, Watch OS 1.0, which is now, it must rely on iPhone exists, logic iPhone tops all applications are good, in that part of the watch will be supporting it. And since the system began 2.0, developers can already develop applications separately for Apple Watch, it is no longer iPhone accessories. Independent Ecological Watch of meaningful long-term development, otherwise, I can only be understood as a continuing squeeze iPhone space.

Microsoft recently officially completed the $ 2.5 billion acquisition of Swedish sandbox game "Minecraft" game developer Mojang studio deal, handle legal matters related to the examination and approval and also simultaneously completed, and Mojang's  HP Pavilion DV7-2150ek motherboard  business has been officially transferred to Microsoft's Xbox division.   In many people's eyes, today's "Minecraft" has almost become the 21st century's "Super Mario", and on a global scale caused a huge sensation. Whether it is on your computer, mobile phone, tablet PC or game console we can see the figure of the game, and the game is also a lot of derivative products appear in department stores, store shops and a variety of games Topic T-shirt shop. At the same time, Mojang also developed a campus for a customized version of "MinecraftEdu", this special edition not only includes the original game, also added many new tools available to teachers and students in the classroom applications. Today, across six continents over 2100 different grades of the schools are using MinecraftEdu. Whether kindergarten, high school or college, whether it is art history to science and then, almost all the subjects teaching the game can be seen in the figure.   So why would not a gorgeous screen and special effects in the third person sandbox game is so popular worldwide it? Perhaps you've heard of players to build "power game" feat in Westeros  mainland in the "minecraft" in it, and the team members also said they were likely to continue to produce in the future Other Continental model "power game" in. I am afraid many people will be curious how they can be a simple single-pixel hay element in the game step by step playing such a complicated capital of Westeros, and this probably also attract many gamers have entered the "I world "the main reason. Here, we may wish to "minecraft" as a virtual Lego platform, and users can be on this virtual platform by combining different elements together and create a lot of stunning architecture and tools. "minecraft" provides unlimited architectural elements and materials, a wide variety of utilities in the game, so users can enjoy their imagination to realize their dream game.   If we simply  HP Pavilion g7-1237dx keyboard  search the network will find that there are a lot of players have been searching on the web about the castle, the city and the estate construction design, we are not even able to search on the Internet a lot are mainly used to discuss "minecraft "community and chat rooms built programs. Put simply, "minecraft" on the main principles of the game unfold around the word, namely "mine" and "craft". For example, if we have been "mining" (mine) in the game to a sufficient raw materials, then we need to do is to raw materials "process" (craft), and in order to expand our manufacturing processes more complex and sometimes We need to dig out more material to upgrade existing tools, transformation. Therefore, this is very easy to produce a flow of the game let the self-satisfaction of many global players are flocking to this, and this game mode is just a "minecraft," one of the most basic features. Now the "minecraft" has launched a more entertaining "survival mode", this mode requires players to use the game map to find material block and the collection of environmental and natural resource production tools and food and to repel the enemy to survive. Players can be produced by synthesis tools in an effort to survive, like on armor, weapons and axes,   Of course, if you just want to create their own ideal cozy castle, then "create mode" may be more suitable for you. In this mode, players can create or destroy any blocks quickly, and without worrying about the value of life roles. Players can take advantage of this to create a variety of giant buildings such as castles, roads, fountains and other forms of art, or go spelunking, and without considering the daytime, conversion, and the enemy's attack of the night. It should be noted that, whether you are a man, and many friends online and can get pleasure from "minecraft", to know that "power game" Westeros is spent by a whole team crafted several months. So, forget about Microsoft spent $ 2.5 billion acquisition of "minecraft" game developer Mojang, forget flourishes Swede Marcus - Persson  TOSHIBA 99.N5682.A01 Keyboard  (MarkusPersson), because "minecraft," popular in the world simply because the game itself and the sophisticated design of the game mode, and nothing else.