Sony buys Gaikai game streaming service for $380M

Sony announced tonight that it will acquire Gaikai, the streaming game service for $380 million. The deal officially closed on June 30, and Sony is purchasing the Aliso Viejo-based company as part of a move to disrupt the gaming business.

The news doesn’t come as a shock; rumors surrounding the potential acquisition rose in May and June of this year, but no official announcement was made until tonight by Gaikai.

What this acquisition means for partnerships that companies like Samsung, LG, Walmart, and others have with Gaikai is unclear, but the potential benefits for Sony are huge. They go anywhere from in-store kiosks playing any Playstation 3 or Playstation Vita title straight from a TV connected only to the internet, to no need for future console hardware because of streaming-only services. Sony has had the benefit, compared to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, of offering free online gaming, and with a streaming cloud service the company may be able to turn the tide against the Redmond-based software giant.

Sony has repeatedly found trouble creating software platforms, something that Gaikai has done tremendously well with their streaming game service. This may prove to be the most important part of this acquisition for Sony, which has struggled to gain dominance in software development when compared to rivals like Microsoft and Nintendo. Sony’s move to the Playstation Mobile, a suite for games that run on both smartphones and game consoles, will also benefit from streaming functions. We’ve already seen earlier this year that streaming games can function very well over cell networks.

“By combining Gaikai’s resources including its technological strength and engineering talent with Sony’s extensive game platform knowledge and experience, Sony will provide users with unparalleled cloud entertainment experiences,” said Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment. “Sony will deliver a world-class cloud-streaming service that allows users to instantly enjoy a broad array of content ranging from immersive core games with rich graphics to casual content anytime, anywhere on a variety of internet-connected devices.”

“Sony has built an incredible brand with PlayStation and has earned the respect of countless millions of gamers worldwide,” said David Perry, CEO of Gaikai. “We’re honored to be able to help Sony rapidly harness the power of the interactive cloud and to continue to grow their ecosystem, to empower developers with new capabilities, to dramatically improve the reach of exciting content and to bring breathtaking new experiences to users worldwide.”

We’ve reached out to both Sony and Gaikai for more, and will update this article as the story unfolds. Mitch Lasky of Benchmark Capital said in a post tonight that years ago, back in the fall of 2009, that his company invested along with Rustic Canyon Ventures and New Enterprise Associates because Gaikai stood at the intersection of cloud computing and next-generation game distribution. Of Gaikai’s Perry, Lasky said, “David believed that his idea could change the world and he went out and made it happen.”

Source:http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/02/sony-buys-gaikai-game-streaming-service/

Apple, Proview Settle iPad Name Dispute for $60 Million

The battle that has raged for months over the rights to the iPad name in China has finally come to an end. Apple has settled the dispute with China's Proview Technology for $60 million.

The news was announced on Monday, China time, on the website for the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province.

"All parties involved have agreed on the settlement. Proview and Apple now no longer have a dispute over the iPad trademark." Although the news just broke, the settlement was apparently agreed to nearly a week ago on June 25," Xie Xianghui, a lawyer for Proview, told China's Xinhua news.

Proview's claim to the iPad name in China first made headlines last year when Proview petitioned to ban the sale of the iPad in China until its lawsuit had been resolved or a settlement reached. Apple's initial response was to cite its supposed purchase of the iPad name from Proview's Taiwan unit for $55,000 back in 2009. Proview's response was to claim that the sale had been executed by a subsidiary party not empowered to grant mainland China rights to the name. The Chinese courts initially sided with Proview, recognizing the company's 2001 trademark on the name and setting the stage for rounds of legal appeals from Apple.

In the interim, some Chinese retailers removed the iPad from shelves, sending the grey market into a frenzy as Chinese shoppers in some cities explored alternative means to acquire the popular device. Nevertheless, when we contacted Apple's flagship store in Beijing earlier this year, the manager confirmed that the iPad remained on sale in the store and online.

Although the settlement will put a dent into Apple's China iPad sales, all things considered, the settlement looks to be something of a win for the company. The $60 million settlement is about $1.5 billion less than the amount Proview had publicly announced it was seeking from the Apple.

China currently accounts for about 20 percent of Apple's overall revenue, making it second only to the U.S. in terms of sales. Given those factors, this settlement may come to represent a minor wrinkle in Apple's overall roadmap as it prepares to roll out the new iPad in China later this year.

Source:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2406585,00.asp

Disgo 9104 review

The advent of Ice Cream Sandwich (otherwise known as Android 4) has breathed new life into the budget tablet market. Devices that before might have felt unbearably sluggish to use, are now actually passable with the new OS on board, and the Disgo 9104 is among the first wave of devices to take advantage.

Its processing power comes from a 1.2GHz Boxchip processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A8 design. Graphics are provided by a Mali 400 GPU, and there's 1GB of RAM. That combination allows the tablet to hit a price well below £200, and yet it remains a usable device.

Android home screens flick by with surprising alacrity, as do menus and the app launch screen. Load up a web page and there is some sluggishness, exposed as a slight lag between moving your finger on the screen and the content catching up, but again this isn't a disaster. Furthermore, most of the games we tried to play ran fine: perhaps not with a completely 100% smooth frame rate, but playable nonetheless.

The design isn't bad either, given the low price. The matte silver chassis is 9.8mm thin, it tips the scales at 620g and connectivity is decent, with Mini-HDMI, 3.5mm headphone jack and a microSD slot for memory expansion ranged along one of the short edges. You get 16GB of internal storage, although the rear 2-megapixel and front VGA cameras seem a bit of an afterthought. The battery was big enough to last 9hrs 50mins in our low-resolution video looping test.

But it's the 9.7in display that's the real star: Disgo claims it's the same panel as used in the iPad 2, which means it's IPS with a resolution of 1,024 x 768. When we measured it using a colorimeter we found it didn't quite match up, with a lower maximum brightness of 295cd/m2 and a contrast ratio of 720:1. Subjectively, the colours don't look quite as vibrant either, but it's a great display for a tablet this cheap.

All this indicates a clear progression from the hideous nastiness of many previous budget Android tablets, but as we began to use the Disgo 9104 in anger, more serious issues cropped up with increasing regularity. Our biggest bugbear was keyboard lag, which has such a deleterious effect on typing that we'd hesitate to recommend using this tablet to work on anything longer than a short email. Even replacing the stock keyboard with third-party keyboard Swiftkey failed to alleviate the issue.

Another problem is that, out of the box, the 9104 is missing the core Google Apps. There's no Gmail, no Maps and, critically, no Play Store. Instead, Disgo has provided links to a number of popular apps on its website, and supplies the third-party app store SlideMe for adding more. Neither is any substitute for the real thing, though, so it's just as well it's possible, with a little effort, to find the installer on the web and add the Play Store yourself.

But before you get that far, it might pay to wait a little and see what effect the newly announced Google Nexus 7 tablet has on the budget market. It costs even less than this at £159, but has a far more powerful processor, a higher resolution screen, full access to the Play Store and the complete set of core Google Apps pre-installed. It's likely that Disgo and companies offering similar products will have to reduce their prices accordingly.

The Disgo 9104 has its plus points - a good screen, 16GB of internal storage and Android 4 - but the arrival of the Nexus 7 and a host of rough edges will most likely put paid to this otherwise promising tablet's chances.

Source: Disgo 9104 review, specs and price | Tablets | Reviews | PC Pro http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/tablets/375595/disgo-9104#ixzz1zTJ6H8m2