The Nintendo 3DS will be four years old this March, and though we are already getting the New Nintendo 3DS soon, a hardware refresh that should be able to eke out a few more years of life from the aging system, the fact of the matter is that we are due for a successor some time soon. Rumblings from within the game industry regarding the next round of Nintendo hardware have started to heat up recently, with Nintendo itself confirming that it is in fact working on successors to 3DS and Wii U currently.

However, at the same time, there has also been the question of exactly what the next Nintendo handheld will be like- remember, Nintendo doesn’t just put out a more powerful version of its previous system. From 3D to touch screen to two screens, there is always a gimmick, always a hook.

The Verge reports that the new free form screens prototyped at CES by Sharp this year are what are the key to the next Nintendo handheld- according to The Verge, Nintendo is looking for a donut shaped screen (no, really) from Sharp for the next handheld, but even if it’s something more conventional, this points to a different screen shape, and therefore, size from their current handhelds. It also points to a completely different conception of their handhelds from the DS line that they have had so far.

You can see some of the prototypes above- a lot of them look very outlandish, but a lot of them would also be very cool. For those of you who doubt whether Nintendo would go with something so obviously cutting edge, remember, the 3DS was the first mass market device to feature an autostereoscopic 3D screen- it was the first device to release with that screen to the mass market where it was beyond the prototyping stage, so there is precedence.

Stay tuned as we bring you more on Nintendo’s new donut shaped handheld.

Valve’s Steam Machine initiative, alongside the associated Steam Controller project, has become the most infamous case of gaming hardware vaporware this side of the Phantom; however, it is Valve, so they do deserve the benefit of the doubt. And apparently, they are gearing up to honor our trust, with a final reveal for the Steam Controller, and what remains of the Steam Machine initiative, coming up at the Game Developers Conference 2015 in March.

This information comes to us from Origin PC CEO Kevin Wasielewski, who revealed the details to GameSpot today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“At GDC, they’re going to have more information,” Wasielewski said. “And we’ll be there. That’s the official stuff we can say. They came out with the controller, then they got some user feedback, and they had to revamp it; they got some more user feedback and had to revamp it again. So they went through that like three or four times. And now their controller is finalized. So now they’re going to production and at GDC is when they’re going to announce more stuff.”

He also talked about what was once the Steam Machine initiative, confirming that the Steam Machine name seems to be pretty much dead by this point, owing to their being no need for separate branding.

“I think that’s kind of pretty much dead,” he said of the term Steam Machine. “It’s like a living room PC–is now the new term. Living room PCs have been around forever. That’s not anything new either. But it seems like there’s a legitimate demand and push for living room PCs.”

It sounds like Valve may have scaled back on the entire effort to have specific Steam Machine standards and branding, and may instead be just content selling its controller and pushing the SteamOS on regular ‘living room PCs.’ Certainly, that would explain why companies that formerly had Steam Machines planned, such as Alienware, went ahead with releasing those machines even after Valve’s delay in pushing the standard out in the first place.

So, looks like GDC this year will be the place to be if you are a Valve fan. We’ll keep you posted.

Intel is one of the titans of the tech industry, and as a result, it is in the unique position to blaze a trail for the rest of the companies in the field to follow. And now, at CES, Intel announced that it would actually be using that position to make a very positive difference- it announced it will be making concerted efforts to increase diversity in the technology industry, including a massive $300 million investment.

While there is a fair bit of diversity already in the industry- people of quite a few races have been known to make it big in multiple Silicon Valley firms, for example- there is still a long way to go. Women, for example, have an appallingly low representation in the field, and most of the higher positions still seem to all be taken up by white men.

“It’s time to step up and do more. It’s not good enough to say we value diversity,” Intel CEOC Brian Krzanich said, reports USA Today.

“This isn’t just good business. This is the right thing to do.”

The money will be spent over a period of five years, so we know that Intel plans on making this a sustained effort, instead of a flash in the pan. Hopefully, they are successful, and other companies follow their lead as well.

We may largely care about Sony as the makers of PlayStation, but remember, they are a massive multimedia multinational multibillion conglomerate still, and still one of the world’s leading electronics companies. At CES, Sony had a keynote address worthy of all of that, and during that keynote address, Sony’s legendary Kaz Hirai took the stage to deliver a rousing speech, a lot of which focused on the PlayStation 4.

“First, the success of PlayStation 4 has enabled a broadening world of PlayStation. The PS4 Platforms has been providing more immersive games than ever before, and allows PlayStation fans to enjoy a wide variety of game content,” he started off.

“And with acclaimed blockbuster titles, as well as great network services including socially connected experiences, PlayStation 4 sold 4.1 million units during this Holiday season, and the total sell-through has now reached more than 18.5 million units since its launch. I’m liking those numbers!

“I’d say, this is a remarkable success for this next generation console, and, actually, this is exceeding the rate of adoption of any other PlayStation Platform.

“And PlayStation Plus also continues to grow, offering a subscription service for content and services for the platform, and reached 10.9 million subscribers.

“Network services include video unlimited, music unlimited, as well as new initiatives such as PlayStation Now, as you know a streaming game service on supported devices covering most PlayStation platforms, and of course Sony devices such as the Bravia TV.

“And, with the arrival of PlayStation Vue, that I talked about earlier, we now offer a comprehensive product platform with unparalleled entertainment experiences.

“PlayStation 4 continues to attract our valued users while providing the best place to play, and together with our third party developers and publishers, including a remarkable group of independent game developers, we will continue to provide the best entertainment available, while delivering Sony signature “WOW” to our valued customers,” he said.

Well, so far, Sony has done a remarkable job in selling PS4s- now let’s just hope they do an equally good job in following up on their word and delivering some good entertainment.

Thanks, DualShockers.

During Sony’s CES keynote address last night, we got a pleasant surprise- a brand new Tony Hawk video game will be coming this year. This is great news because back in the day, Tony Hawk games used to be among the best video games available on the market, before Activision predictably ran them into the ground, with their last efforts a few years ago trying to tie the games in with plastic peripherals.

The game was announced at Sony’s conference, so right now, all that we know is that it will be coming to the PS4 for sure, though it’s not a stretch to assume that it will also come to PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and maybe even Wii U- it’s a relatively more casual focused title that has historically done best thanks to its multiplatform nature.

We also don’t quite know the name yet. We actually don’t know anything apart from the fact that it exists, but as and when we learn more, we will let you know.

Everybody and their mother is jumping aboard the VR hype train these days, with the Facebook backed Oculus Rift, the Sony backed Morpheus, the Glyph, and now, it seems like well known PC gaming peripheral maker, Razer, is releasing its own VR initiative. It will be called Open Source VR, with the flagship product being the OSVR Hacker Dev Kit, which will cost $200.

However, the VR space is not the only crowded segment that Razer is planning on getting into, as it also announced a brand new Android powered microconsole, the Razer Forge TV, which will cost $100, and be coming soon. No seriously, when will these companies get the hint?

In better news, Razer is also working on bringing PC controls to the living room, with the Razer Turret package, selling for $130, trying to bring ergonomical keyboard and mouse usage to your couch.

Hopefully it all works out for Razer.

There are a few things we have known for a while now. Sony and Microsoft have both skimped out on their new consoles, which are only roughly equivalent to midrange PCs from 2011-2012 at best. Unlike every other console generation, these consoles did not represent the most advanced gaming technology at launch and secondly, mobile graphics tech is slowly catching up, especially thanks to Nvidia’s Tegra efforts

Alright, and now, both of these facts converged when last night, at their CES showing, Nvidia revealed the brand new Tegra X1 mobile GPU, which is based on the company’s runaway success, the desktop line of Maxwell cards. The X1 has 256 CUDA processor cores and 8 CPU cores, and Nvidia’s Jen-Hsun Huang pointed out that it handles 4K video at 60 Hz, suggesting there’s “nothing like it in the world.”

He then proceeded to show the Elemental tech demo made using Unreal Engine that would run using 300W on the Xbox One just one year ago… running on Tegra X1 with just 10W, and with no vast noticeable downgrade in quality or visual fidelity either.

The X1 promises an efficient, graphically stunning future for video games, and can potentially power not just smartphones, tablets, and laptops, but also cars, smart watches, the internet of things, handhelds, and even home consoles. With at least one console manufacturer working already on their next generation effort, Nvidia’s efforts right now will probably not go unnoticed.

Image used for representation purpose.

It’s been a long time coming, but it has finally happened- at CES 2015, the world’s leading chipmaker, Intel, came out and announced that their 5th generation Core processors are finally a reality, bringing with them everything that the PC industry has been anticipating for years, now.

This includes a smaller die process (14nm, or down by 35%), a total of 1.3 billion transistors (or up by 37%), and, more to the point for PC gamers, 3D performance increased by as much as 22%. Intel has also announced that it will be refreshing its entire lineup on the market- this includes not just the Core i3, i5, and i7 models, which was expected, but also Pentium and Celeron.

They also announced that devices powered by Intel’s newest chips (which will run a full gamut of form factors, incidentally, with Intel anticipating new laptops, desktops, convertibles, 2-in-1s, and more being powered by their new CPUs), will be hitting the market soon. It appears that PC gaming is about to take another insurmountable leap over console gaming.

While CES 2015 has so far been great for fans of video games, with news on the latest chips from Nvidia and Intel both making waves, there are also some far more… esoteric… applications related to video games that have been coming to light at the trade show. One of these is- no, I am not shitting you- a way to play video games with your feet via a brand new controller called the 3DRudder.

The 3DRudder is a sort of rubber board, and it tracks your feet movements, with each movement being mapped to a corresponding in game action. I would say think of it as a Wii Balance Board, but it sounds like it would be a little more sophisticated than that.

It seems to be made for PCs, and is easy to run, just requiring a USB port and a few minutes for driver installs and calibrations.

So, um… yeah.

Thanks, The Verge.

Chinese companies often take liberal inspiration from internationally successful products, with pretty blatant trademark and IP infringements, and products sold with names that laughably represent the real thing- for instance, you will run into many a Nii or a Play System on Chinese streets.

With that said, it appears that one of these Chinese products is now trying to make it big in the US. It is called the OBox, and it is being backed by Snail Games, who are currently massive in China, having expanded from a browser-based MMO developer to both hardware manufacturer and the nation’s fifth biggest cellphone service provider.

At CES 2015, they showed off their OBox and W3D initiatives, both designed to gain inroads into the US market. The OBox is powered by the Nvidia K1 processor, and Snail Games has a pretty progressive plan to let retailers offer different variations, with the options being offered being as mundane as different storage capacities, to different HDMI setups, and even different processors; the consoles are all modular, meaning even if you scrimp and get the cheapest possible option now, you can upgrade with the better parts later.

The only kicker? It’s an Android console.

So that’s another promising product doomed to failure, much like the Ouya, the Fire TV, and the Google Nexus Player.

The W 3D is not a console- it is a smartphone, and it too runs on Android, except this has buttons, meaning high end gaming options might actually be a thing here. It has an 8-core MTK6595/2.2GHZ CPU, meaning it rivals the Vita, if not far supercedes it, in terms of premium handheld hardware… it also has a glasses free autostereoscopic 3D screen, so that’s the 3DS’s signature feature covered there as well.

While it would be foolish to count Snail Games out, considering what all they have accomplished in China, do remember that China is a very different kind of market, and Android based gaming has, so far, completely failed to take off in the US.

We will see.

Source: The Verge