Mists of Pandaria Beta

Mists of Pandaria is releasing on October 7, 2012 and everybody is excited but we already have beta keys for Mists of Pandaria for all the WoW players that need them.

Blizzard is distributing lots of Diablo 3 Beta Keys - Find out how to get one

Blizzard is giving away lots of Diablo 3 beta keys. To get one, follow these steps:

1. Sign up to D3Sanc.com
2. Post on the forums to increase your chances to win.
3. Wait and get a D3 beta key.

The Nintendo 3DS sucks

I got a Nintendo 3DS and I have to say that it sucks. It came with the dumbest apps ever. I find 3DS to be a half-baked technology prototype than an actual console. Heck, it hurts my hands if I hold the thing for more than half an hour - that's how poorly it is designed. The buttons are way too small.  Then, there's the sad fact that all the games and apps suck. One of the most purchased games is Mario from the early 90s. Why would I want a 3D-capable dual-screen piece of technology just so I can play Mario in single-color? It makes no sense.  There's a 3D camera and a front-facing camera so theoretically the 3DS is capable of 3D augmented reality but other than Nintendo itself (a couple of simple games that ship with the 3DS) nobody has taken advantage of this.

Nintendo needs to redesign the 3DS so it isn't clumsy to hold, and then develop games first (no Mario please!) before thinking about re-releasing it. It has potential, but everything about it sucks right now. Even the hinge and the 3D slider feels creaky and unstable.

Here's an excerpt from a news story about how the 3DS is pulling Nintendo's stock down:


Japanese Newspaper: Nintendo Cursed by Mario
Nintendo is expected to show a consolidated loss for 2011. Thanks to the doom and gloom climate, its stock recently dipped below the ¥10,000 (US$127) per share mark for the first time in over 7 years. The cause of this overall loss can be attributed in part to the poor sales performance of the 3DS. The fact that Nintendo was forced to drop the price of the 3DS, thus forcing them to take a loss for every unit sold certainly didn't help any.
No one can doubt that Nintendo has come a long way from the modest little card company in 1889 to the game giant it is now. In 1985, Nintendo released Super Mario Brothers and cemented themselves as THE game company for years to come and making Mario the most famous video game icon in the world. But is there such a thing as too much Mario?
But now, financial experts argue that Nintendo's reliance on the Italian plumber is preventing their growth in the new digital age. According to Japan's Sankei News, "As the game market evolves, Nintendo seems unable to move beyond creating games that rely on the image of Mario..." and that this "Curse of Mario" has hampered Nintendo's ability to adapt their business model to the newer market of DLC and smaller indie games. Could it be that Mario's economic life-span is coming to an end?

Perhaps it's time Nintendo gave the prolific little plumber a rest from his kart and various suits. Then again, according to a report by Famitsu, Nintendo managed to pull in the majority of sales shares (23.6%) for January of 2012, so maybe too much Mario isn't such a bad thing after all... Still, it's comforting to know that Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto is focusing on making new games and training fresh blood.

Diablo III release date May 23, 2012

Blizzard has announced that the release date for Diablo III is set for May 23, 2012. Pre-order for the collector's version is sold out everywhere for $99.95 and the $59.95 for the regular version of Diablo 3 is still available for pre-ordering.

There are various classes available in D3, but I'll be playing Witch Doctor because it's better than Barbarian. I was part of the closed beta for which I got the Diablo III beta keys from D3Sanc's forums just by posting in a thread telling people to post and get a free Diablo3 beta key.

I entered it into the game authorization code after installing Diablo 3 and got an unlimited beta until launch date!

Tokyo Sky Tree Tower is Completely Useless

The Tokyo Sky Tree Tower is designed primarily to be a broadcasting tower and also serving as a restaurant and observation deck. That's all fine and dandy but here's something to think about: Nobody watches broadcast television anymore and people are listening to radio less and less. Instead, people are watching TV via the Internet (such as Hulu, Youtube, Netflix, etc.) and radio as well. So, who came up with the bright idea that hundreds of millions of dollars can be wasted on building a broadcasting tower?

I'm moving to Sapporo because Tokyo is obviously too stupid to build the Tokyo Sky Tree.

Xbox 2021

After Xbox 720, the life-cycle of the Microsoft console dictates that the next Xbox will debut for the 2021 Christmas season. I'll call it the Xbox 2021 because there has not been a name announced for it yet:

Features of the Xbox 2021

Kinect 2021 Features:

• Clothing-detection and recording. Xbox will know all the clothes and accessories you have.
• UV, Infrared, and Imagining lasers that can triangulate and detect surface textures: i.e. plastics, wood, metal, human flesh, glass, water, etc.
• Voice-detection in all languages.
• OCR capabilities that allow Kinect to read QR codes and other text.
• Automatic detection of cell-phone use and lowering of volume of the game.
• Ability to see-through furniture by guessing where parts of the body (such as legs) should be based on the body posture.
• Eye-ball tracking based controls where players can control the entire experience using just their pupils and eyes.
• Air-typing: ability to detect typing on a virtual keyboard when players hold their hands in the air in front of them and pretend to type on an invisible keyboard.
• Infrared remote temperature sensor to detect body temperature of players (in case they are sick).
• Infrared breath sensor to detect player's tension levels.

Xbox 2021 features:

• 8K resolution support.
• 3D Holographic Room Projector system support. (and of course: 3D TV support). This will allow players to be fully immersed when the room they are in transforms into, for example, a battleground or a puzzle.
• Backwards compatibility with Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox 720, of course.
• 6G Mobile Broadband support allowing for speeds of 100 GBit/sec up and down.
• USB 4.1 support to connect ancient technology. Bluetooth support for headsets, etc.
• Cloud-based hard-drive of unlimited size.
• On-the-fly (cloud-based) game streaming without the need to download/install games.
• Ability to connect to multiple TVs in the house and stream many different 8K HD quality videos at the same time.
• Optical protein-disc drive (to play old Xbox 360 and Xbox 720 games).
• HD recording of all gameplay, all the time.
• Microsoft Windows 9 operating system.
• The entire console is actually a tablet that you can take anywhere with you by detaching it from the Xbox dock.

Wishlist for Kinect 2

The original Kinect camera has a resolution of 320 x 240 at 30fps. I think this can be increased to at least 8 megapixels at 30 fps. This means HD video-chatting.

Also the new Kinect has lips detection so it can process the voice-commands much better. I think the new Kinect can go a step further and integrate facial feature recognition such as eye-brows, eye-shape, mouth, nose, etc. so it can detect sighing, pouting, anger, smiling, etc. The new Kinect also has detection for voice tone, which I think is great. Hopefully the voice recognition will be more accurate because of this. Also perhaps they can use another keyword other than "Xbox" for the voice commands. Perhaps something like, "X-Command ... PLAY MOVIE".

Also I think it should record the room in 3D to understand the room a lot better - including bouncing sounds around the room which it does already.