Amazon
Sources familiar with both companies have been suggesting this week that Amazon has shelled out between $50 and $70 million for a deal to secure Crytek's CryEngine game engine. The engine has been used to power the Far Cry and Crysis franchises, and the deal would appear to fall at a time when the games developers are struggling to find their feet after the colossal failure of Xbox One launch title; “Ryse: Son of Rome.”
Amazon has shelled out between $50 and $70 million for a deal to secure the CryEngine
It's unclear at this point exactly what Amazon are planning to do with the purchase, but the online retail giant has made significant strides into the world of gaming recently with the launch of their Amazon Game Studios. All games produced by the studio thus far have been less ambitious, mobile games, but in licensing an engine like Crytek's, it would appear they have plans to move into big budget titles in the future.
Sony
The cloud gaming service OnLive is officially shutting down after selling 140 of its patents to Sony. The California-based service was once valued at $1.8bn, but ran into serious trouble back in 2012 after finding itself $40m in debt. Regardless of the shutdown, Sony is still looking to apply all acquired patents to its current lineup, no doubt utilising said patents as part of its own Playstation Now service, which already borrows rather heavily from OnLive. A statement from OnLive said “It is with great sadness that we must bring the OnLive Game Service to a close. As the first-ever game streaming service of its kind, everyone who has ever played a game using OnLive has contributed to the technology and its evolution in some way.”
Philips
Philips has developed a new portable light as part of their Hue smart lighting range. The new Hue Go, is the first portable dynamic lighting device from Philips, and packs three hours on a single charge. The Hue Go is a convenient utility light fit for any number of occasions where a moderate amount of omnidirectional lighting is required, and when plugged in it can output up to 300 lumens, meaning it's surprisingly powerful for such a small device. It’s also compatible with third-party Hue apps, and can be included in any lighting “Scenes” you program using those apps or existing Hue systems. It’ll retail for $99.95 in the US and will be released by the end of May or the beginning of June.
A new startup called Kifi has created a new tool allowing Twitter users to save all of their tweets and use them to create a personalised search engine. The engine not only indexes the tweet, but the content contained within any links included in those tweets, which will allow users to more easily retrieve information in the future. According to Kifi's vice president of product Mark Yoshitake, the idea for the tool came after they found that “People have a hard time recalling the wealth of information they’ve found and shared on social networks.”
Kifi has created a new tool allowing Twitter users to save all of their tweets and use them to create a personalised search engine
Kifi posits itself as a unique solution to this problem, and as well as indexing your tweets and links, it also analyses your content and makes recommendations based on them regarding related items that you might find interesting. Yoshitake adds this feature is “Essentially an interest graph plus a people graph and a topic graph all integrated together.” Kifi currently has around 60,000 users, and whilst the deep search functionality for Twitter has only been live for a few days now, it's already been gained a couple of hundred thousand users per day!
OnePlus
OnePlus has released its owned modified version of Android's “Lollipop” operating system for its OnePlus One smartphone, the first new OS from the company since it split with partner Cyanogen back in January. The OxygenOS focuses on performance and battery life, with other features including gesture controls from the off screen, quick setting adjustment, and a file manager. In a statement, the company said; “By creating our own operating system, we can quickly respond to user feedback and make it easier for you to continue playing a fundamental role in the future of OnePlus. Our goal for OxygenOS is to provide faster, more meaningful updates and a better-integrated range of services for every OnePlus user.”
Hulu
Whilst it might not be available in this country, in the US, Hulu is an online video streaming service with almost as much clout as Netflix, and this week, the service released a new bespoke tool that will allow users to search for GIFs using a special Tumblr powered search engine. The “Perfect GIF” site specialises in TV-related GIFs from shows available on Hulu, with GIFs arranged by tag, show and even the action involved in the image.
The “Perfect GIF” site specialises in TV-related GIFs from shows available on Hulu
The idea behind the site is to convince users to share these GIFs via social media, spreading awareness of Hulu and its programmes in the process. The idea of a GIF search engine is not a unique one (see Giphy), but the fact that these GIFs have been drawn from classic shows such as Cheers, Friends and The X-Files should prove reason enough for social media savvy TV fans to at least check it out. At launch there are over 1,400 GIFs from dozens of shows across major networks including Fox, NBC, FX and Showtime, and Hulu has also commented that they will add new GIFS as their portfolio of shows expands.
Microsoft
It was announced this week that whilst Microsoft will continue to support their Kinect v2 on the Xbox One, they have decided to simplify the range of motion sensors by ceasing production on Kinect for Windows. Microsoft will, however, continue to produce their proprietary adapter, which allows users to connect the Xbox One Kinect device to their Windows PCs. Microsoft also announced their new Surface 3 tablet this week, which at just 8.7mm thickness and 1.37 pounds, is the thinnest and lightest device in the Surface roster. It features the same multi-touch and pen-controlled screen as the larger and more powerful Surface Pro 3, as well as front and rear-facing cameras that both capture 1080p video, and has a battery life of 10 hours. It also uses a Micro USB charger, which makes it compatible with most smartphone chargers.
