Gone are the days of Blackberry being business only.
With the rise of a new CEO who wants to stay on track with the leading markets, Blackberry maker, Research In Motion (RIM), is going for a complete overhaul of the company. RIM has recently missed new product deadlines and targets for sales, while at the same time all of their competitors in the smartphone market eagerly took their customers from them, while promising a more user-friendly experience.
I love Resident Evil 4. I bought it the day it came out for Gamecube. Then I bought it for PS2. And Wii. And PS3. And Xbox 360. The only reason I haven’t picked up the iPhone version was because I don’t have one, but it turns out I may be able to get a mobile version of the game soon without having to fork money over for an expensive iDevice: Capcom has announced that they’re porting the iPhone versions of RE4 and Street Fighter 4 over to the Android, but there’s one catch: both games are exclusive to the South Korean market, at least for now.
The port is being done as part of Capcom’s exclusivity agreement with Korean electronics manufacturer LG, and both RE4 and Street Fighter 4 for Android will only be available on LG’s LTE App marketplace until May. These games haven’t been announced for other markets, but given Capcom’s love of getting gamers to buy and re-buy their favorite games over and over again, I’d be willing to bet a sizable sum that we’ll be saying these games show up on American phones sooner rather than later.
Obviously the button and analog stick-less interface on smartphones isn’t exactly the best way to control these games, but while Street Fighter 4 on iPhone had to be dumbed-down to the point of being a different game, I hear that the mobile RE4 is a decent enough diversion in it’s own right. While substantial changes had to be made in order to make it work on a mobile platform, it’s supposed to be pretty decent as far as “real” gaming apps go.
…Or, y’know, you could just play the new Resident Evil on your 3DS.
Samsung is stepping up their game in the mobile phone division. With the release of the Galaxy Note, it is the best solution for the traveling artist that I have ever seen. With its incomparable 5.3” Samsung display, it is quite possibly the brightest and most color rich phone I have seen.
Last year wasn’t the best year for Sony. After the whole PSN debacle, Sony has been struggling to sort out their PR. With spirits up, the Presidents of Sony took the stage earlier tonight for their first press conference of this year’s CES 2012. Some of the highlights of the show tonight were the new Walkman Android smartphone, Netflix for the Vita on day one, Xperia Ion, Bloggie, 4K resolution, 3D, Will Smith and Kelly Clarkson.
There have been confirmed reports that claim that Research In Motion (RIM) will not launch its Blackberry 10 OS until the fall end of next year. The RIM chief stated the reason being that the company had not yet been able to procure sufficient production of the required dual core processors in bulk, which was leading to the inordinate delay.
HP recently announced that their mobile platform WebOS will be now be released to the open source software community. Analysts speculate that this move is mainly aimed at allowing other smart phone manufacturers to use the OS (leading to greater adoption and more applications) and will lead to greater development of the platform. It is also expected that an open source WebOS will lead to the creation of a truly viable alternative to Android in the open source OS niche, since Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Apple’s iOS (the two other major platforms in the market) are both closed ecosystems.
Recently the ESRB has announced that it will start doing mobile ratings, starting in 2012, but it may be for nothing as Apple and Google will have no part of it. The ESRB has been keeping game ratings private and providing parents with adequate information on what games they shouldn’t and shouldn’t buy their kids. Google feels it’s current marketplace ratings system is just fine.
There have been solid reports which show what the first-of-its-kind Panasonic smart phone will look like. This device will be Panasonic’s first venture into the smart phone market, and will be a litmus test for their plans to create a global following for their smart phone devices. Panasonic has branded it to be an ‘ultra slim model’ which will be roughly around 7.8 mm thick, with a D shaped curve at the back. The front side of this phone is very impressive, with a 4.3 inch AMOLED screen of qHD resolution and a slick rim.
Another remake for the popular Capcom title Mega Man X — this time for iOS — is in the works, and set to arrive this month.
Reports on Andriasang indicate the new version is based on the currently available mobile edition. Still, enjoying Mega Man X with touch screen controls is a questionable concept, as the mere thought of an SNES side-scrolling game without conventional buttons is scary.
A little wag in the Sony office has revealed that all new Xperia models, and even the ones that are currently in the market, will get the taste of the much hyped Ice Cream Sandwich (Android v4.0) by January 2012. The Italy office of Sony Xperia, however, had another version of the news, where they said that Xperia devices won’t have the ICS until March end.
In an innovative move, Microsoft has unveiled a demo online version of their Metro UI, which will allow Android and iOS users to get an idea as to how Windows Phone devices work. It is not an application per se, but it is basically an HTML and Java Script website which will serve as a kind of a mock version of the Windows Phone.
A whole ago, Activision and Treyarch released an iOS game called Call of Duty: World at War zombies which did so well they announced that tomorrow (December 1st) you can get your hands on their next installment with Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies.
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