Razer's Firefly Hard Gaming Mat Features Customizable Lighting Effects

Razer's Firefly Hard Gaming Mat Features Customizable Lighting Effects

Razer continues to illuminate gaming setups around the world with its latest introduction of the Firefly - a hard gaming mouse mat with customizable lighting effects that joins Razer's Chroma series of mice, keyboards and headsets. Yes, you heard correctly. This micro-textured gaming surface sports Razer's colorful Chroma lighting feature bordering the bottom, left and right sides of the mat, which can be fully customized with more than 16 million different color options and eye-catching lighting effects like waving illumination, color spectrum cycling, fade breathing as well as a reactive illumination effect that works exclusively with Razer gaming mice. 

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Sony Unveils Tiny PS Vita TV Gaming Console, Budget Living Room Entertainment

At the Tokyo Game Show 2013 keynote, Sony has introduced an unexpected new miniature gaming console painted all in white - the PlayStation Vita TV. When connected to a TV or any other external monitor using HDMI, the PS Vita TV will let you play all Vita designed games and can be wirelessly controlled using Sony's DualShock 3 controllers. Like its portable handheld brother, the PS Vita TV features the same user interface found on the PS Vita and doubles as a entertainment set-top-box with features like Sony's Video and Music services as well as Hulu and other online media services. So really Sony created an even tinier Roku/Apple TV competitor only with gaming functionality that's already rich with established Vita titles. 

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Logitech's iPhone 5 Gamepad Controller Leaked

There are rumors saying that Apple has been working with Logitech to create the first ever Made for iPhone controller accessory, and this is it. Logitech's G series gamepad controller for the iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5. The controller has what looks like a soft-touch rubbery finish and a well rounded shape featuring a basic control interface including a thumbstick and a traditional d-pad button arrangement on the right side with a passive sound port that will help direct the sound coming from the iPhone 5's speaker. iOS 7 will natively support third party controllers. We're sure many more controllers will find their way onto the iPhone accessory market.

Nir Schneider

Editor-in-Chief

PlayStation 4 Console Hardware Unveiled, Priced At $400

Sony finally unveiled its PlayStation 4 console hardware today at E3, and it isn't looking very interesting to say the least. The slanted blocky shaped design looks outdated, a step back compared to Sony's PlayStation 3 Slim. By comparison, the Xbox One's $500 hardware is a clear aesthetic winner. We do like the new DualShock 4 controller and its touchpad awesomeness though. The PlayStation 4 is priced at $400, a more compelling price point compared to the Xbox One.

PlayStation®4 was designed from the ground up to ensure that game creators can unleash their imaginations to develop the very best games and deliver new play experiences never before possible.

With ultra-fast customized processors and 8GB of high-performance unified system memory, PS4™ is the home to games with rich, high-fidelity graphics and deeply immersive experiences that shatter expectations.

If you don't recall, Sony announced the DualShock 4 along with the specs of the PlayStation 4 back in February. The console specs include an 8-core Jaguar AMD CPU with AMD graphics, 8GB of GDDR5 memory, a built-in hard drive for storage and naturally a Blu-ray drive. The specs line up with what you'll find inside the Xbox One, but we're not seeing Sony boast the same kind of claims Microsoft has made regarding its Xbox One's ultra-fast instant-on boot up times, user interface responsiveness and intelligent game-download technology...yet. 

The DUALSHOCK 4 controller incorporates a new highly sensitive six-axis sensor, as well as a touch pad located on the top of the controller, which offers gamers completely new ways to play and interact with games.

The newly developed PlayStation Camera for PlayStation 4 incorporates two high-sensitive cameras that have wide-angle lenses with 85-degree diagonal angle views which can recognize the depth of space precisely.

Update: Looks like the official release date for the PlayStation 4 is December 31 of this year.

Nir Schneider

Editor-in-Chief

Xbox One Console Priced At $500 With A November Release, Available For Pre-Order

Microsoft has announced that the Xbox One will be priced at $500 and is scheduled to be released on November 30. The so called "Day One Edition" Xbox One is available for pre-order starting today on Amazon, and it includes a limited edition controller, Kinect sensor and premium packaging.

Nir Schneider

Editor-in-Chief

Used Xbox One Games Cannot Be Played Unless You Pay A Fee

Planning on saving money by buying used Xbox One games? Think again. If not being able to play your Xbox 360 games on the new Xbox One didn't infuriate you enough, Microsoft hasn't confirmed this yet, but there are strong rumors that selling and purchasing used Xbox One games will cost you more than you've bargained for. How much exactly? Any Xbox One user who has purchased a pre-owned game no matter how or from where, will have to pay the full retail cost of that certain game thru activation in order to play and download the game under that person's account. Each disc would have to be tied to a single Xbox Live account, restricting it from being used under a different owner.

Essentially what this means is that you'll always pay full retail price for new game titles, but games that were never used could still be purchased at any given price set by a retail store or an individual. How will rental services like Gamefly work around this if ever, is still a question left unasnwered, but we hope Microsoft has a game plan for rental services.

Nir Schneider

Editor-in-Chief

Xbox One, The New Next-Gen Entertainment Console

Microsoft seized today with its special unveiling event where the company announced its impressive next-generation gaming console, the Xbox One. A redesigned "all-in-one" living room entertainment console meets set-top box built from the ground up, packing a slot-loading blu-ray drive you'll only need to be using once to play games. The Xbox One downloads the game data automatically while you play onto its non-replaceable 500GB hard drive (expandable using external storage) the first time you insert a disc so it'll be playable without it from there on.

Powering it is an AMD and Microsoft developed 8-core processor with an on-board GPU chip and 8GB of RAM. The One's Windows operating system is a combination of three OSs engineered to respond intuitively and powerful enough to run apps alongside a game simultaneously without loss in performance. The Xbox One instantly powers up with a Windows 8-like home screen interface ladened with TV, movie, music and app integration with instant switching from one place to another.

Microsoft has also designed a new Kinect 2 motion sensor that'll accompany the new Xbox One which boasts a 1080p wide-angle camera with heart rate monitoring capability, gesture recognition and voice recognition so you can interact with it thru various voice commands like powering the console on just by saying "Xbox on", which will also turn on your TV. Voice commands are snappy to deliver instant results even when wanting to bring up a certain channel without having to use your TV remote.

Switching between inputs is a thing of the past now that the One features several USB 3.0 ports and HDMI pass-thru which enables you to watch live TV right on your Xbox while your TV, TV provider box and Xbox are interconnected. Built-in WiFi naturally of course. And yes you can game without being online.

With a new sleek console comes an improved wireless controller that utilizes Kinect to automatically recognize which individual has picked up the controller to bring up a personalized player experience on-screen. The new Xbox One controller sports a more ergonomic shape and is fitted with newly designed thumbstick shape and grip texture as well as vibrating impulse triggers with force feedback, and several more improvements - notably a built-in rechargeable battery. The new impulse triggers are perhaps the most impressive new feature to come with the new controller where you'll be able to feel the tightness of a car breaking and the vibration of a motor thru increasing throttle.

The best gaming controller just got better with over 40 technology innovations. New Impulse Triggers deliver precise fingertip feedback for more realistic experiences. We have streamlined the thumbsticks, D-pad, and contours for improved precision and comfort in your hands. Simply put, it is the best controller we've ever made.

The Xbox One runs four times quieter than its predecessor thanks to its redesigned cooling system. Microsoft confirmed that it will not run Xbox 360 game discs. 15 new game titles were also announced including an exclusive launch of Call Of Duty: Ghosts, Forza Motorsport 5, Fifa 12, NBA Live 14, Madden NFL 25, EA UFC and more.

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