E3 2015 Press Conference Schedule #E32015

Links to view the press conferences will be added soon.

Xbox One Special Edition Halo: The Master Chief Collection Bundle coming later this month May 2015

Xbox One Special Edition Halo

Microsoft has announced a limited edition of the Xbox One Special Edition Halo: The Master Chief Collection Bundle will be available later this month.

The bundle comes with a digital download code for Halo: The Master Chief Collection.  The collection features the Master Chief’s complete story through four Halo games:

• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
• Halo 2: Anniversary
• Halo 3
• Halo 4

It is priced at $349 and available at participating US retailers.

You can become a Nintendo World Champion!

Do you want to be the Nintendo World Champion of 2015? 

Do you live near a Best Buy at the following locations?

• San Francisco, CA (1717 Harrison St.)
• Torrance, CA (3675 Pacific Coast Highway)
• Miami, FL (10760 NW 17th St.)
• Schaumburg, IL (900 E. Golf Road)
• Maple Grove, MN (12905 Elm Creek Blvd. N)
• Long Island City, NY (5011 Northern Blvd.)
• Dallas, TX (9378 N Central Expy)
• Tacoma, WA (2214 S. 48th St.)

If you said “Yes!” 

Xiaomi welcomes beta testers to buy, Charges outrageous shipping fee

Xiaomi, a private Chinese electronics company and manufacturer of the popular and affordably priced Mi smartphone has opened up their online store to markets outside of China today.

The online store does not sell smartphones or tablets, instead only a few accessories are available such as battery packs, Mi headphones, and Mi Band.  The reasonably priced accessories seem to be sold out in less than an hour after availability but we do not know how many items were actually stocked.

Fujifilm X-T10 Mirrorless Camera Launched

Fujifilm has announced a new addition to the X series of cameras named the X-T10.  The X-T10 is an interchangeable lens camera with an APS-C sized CMOS II sensor. The new camera model has an electronic viewfinder with a 2.3 million dot display, new AF system with 49 point AF mode, and is capable of a continuous shooting speed of up to 8 fps.

The X-T10 APS-C sensor size of 23.6 x 15.6mm can capture photos at 16.3 megapixels.  The sensor is larger than Micro Four Thirds, and 1 inch sensors but smaller than a Full Frame sensor.

What we know - Sony Project Morpheus VR Prototype

Sony Computer Entertainment will launch Project Morpheus in the first half of 2016. Project Morpheus is a virtual reality headset that can be used with the PlayStation 4 to deliver an immersive experience, be it for gaming, viewing movies, or possibly viewing the web in a new manner.

The Morpheus VR headset covers a 100 degree view of the user. An OLED 5.7 inch display is currently used in the prototype providing a resolution of 1920 x 1080 or 960 x 1080 per eye. With a 120 fps output, the user should experience smoother images which would not deter from an immersive gaming session.

Fight Club 2 available on May 27, 2015

The sequel to Fight Club will soon arrive on May 27, 2015 in the form of a comic book series published by Dark Horse Comics.  

 Fight Club 2 is a 10 issue series written by Chuck Palahniuk and drawn by Cameron Stewart.

“Ten years after starting Project Mayhem, he lives a mundane life. A kid, a wife, pills to keep his destiny at bay. But it won’t last long; the wife has seen to that. The time has come . . .”

Writer:  Chuck Palahniuk

Artist: Cameron Stewart

Oculus Rift Minimum PC Specs Revealed

Oculus recently announced that the consumer version of the Rift will be shipping in Q1 2016 and pre-orders will begin later this year.

Many have wondered how powerful of a desktop would be needed to power the Oculus rift and today Oculus has revealed the recommended specifications.

For the full Rift experience, we recommend the following system:

·        NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater

·        Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater

·        8GB+ RAM

·        Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output

·        2x USB 3.0 ports

·        Windows 7 SP1 or newer

Their reason for the recommended specs is that this will deliver an excellent VR experience mandated by Rift games and applications in combination with the Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. This requires 3 times the GPU power of 1080p rendering thus the recommended graphics card of either an Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD 290.

Latency is also a problem with VR so along with a powerful graphics card, the user should have an Intel i5-4590 or greater CPU and at least 8GB of RAM.

A search of prices for the recommended components show that one can easily spend nearly $1000 just for the recommended PC. With the main costs belonging to the Nvidia GTX 970 for around $350, and Intel i5-4590 processor for $200.

Oculus does not mention how the Rift will perform with a lower spec’d system but we can assume that it will lead to a bad VR experience such as lag from user input and what is displayed causing nausea.

Source: Oculus

About the Author:

 

Tony Nguyen currently moonlights as a freelance entertainment, movie, and game writer. You can find his work across the web including blog.eoncloud.com. It’s dangerous to go alone, so follow him on Twitter @TonyLNguyen.

Nintendo announces silver Mario Amiibo to arrive May 29th, 2015

Attention collectors, Nintendo has announced a silver Mario Amiibo will arrive in stores on 5/29/2015 for $12.99. 

The silver Mario Amiibo looks exactly like the Mario Amiibo that is included with Mario Party 10 for the Wii U except it is now silver.

Unlike the Walmart exclusive gold Mario Amiibo, the silver Mario Amiibo will be available at different retailers including Best Buy.

In fact, Best Buy Canada already has a pre-order page up. 

Nintendo World Championships returns at E3 Expo 2015

Nintendo released their E3 2015 pre-announcement in the form of a video and the big news is Nintendo World Championship is back.

A live stream of the Nintendo World Championships can be viewed on Sunday, 6/14/2015.

Fans can compete in qualifying competitions for the Nintendo World Championships on May 30 at Best Buy locations in major cities.

Those located in the Los Angeles, CA area will be able to attend the final round of the championships at Nokia Theatre. 

No information on if there will be a cost to attend as a spectator.

More details will be shared on the upcoming events at Nintendo's E3 site.