Light Start – Sony VR, African gaming, Dislike, smart basketball, and folding smartphones
Brett Venter
Project Morpheus becomes the less cool-sounding PlayStation VR
Those who don’t follow every incident in the gaming world religiously may have missed the Tokyo Games Show this week. We… didn’t, and what we found out is that Sony’s gaming virtual reality headset, previously known as Project Morpheus, has been renamed PlayStation VR. In order to soften the blow, Sony also detailed the playable (demo) content for the PlayStation VR, a list which includes Final Fantasy 14 Online, Summer Lesson (just… don’t ask), Kitchen, Dynasty Warriors 7, Rigs, Joysound VR and others. So the PS VR will at least have games at launch. And it’ll always be Morpheus in our hearts.
Unlimber your wallets and sponsor some African gaming
Game development on the African continent is on the up. Witness the excellent Stasis (link), which was made by a South African team and which has garnered some impressive reviews so far. Next up, a studio from Cameroon needs your help to get their game, an RPG called Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan which features some distinctly African character styling, in terms of character, narrative and setting, to market. That’s something that isn’t often explored in gaming and for that reason alone it’d be worth getting this 2D RPG to market. Their Kickstarter campaign (link) is out for about R610,000 but just R305 will get you a digital copy of the game when it launches.
Facebook’s going to create that ‘dislike’ button you want so much. But…
…they may not be all that cool with you calling it a Dislike button. Yes, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, speaking recently at a meeting at their Menlo Park (in the States, not Pretoria) headquarters and on a live-stream at the same time (how talented) confirmed that the social network is working on… something like that. It’s less of a ‘dislike’ and more of a way to express sympathy, according to Zuck. You don’t really want to click Like on the news of some tragedy, after all, unless you’re some kind of monster. When we can expect it… that hasn’t been revealed but it’s coming.
Everything else is connected, why not a basketball?
We’ve connected things to other things, from wearable computers to camera drones, and we’ve seen quite a bit of sporting equipment on the way, for golf and tennis swings. But making a ball a connected device? That’s a new one. Basketball company Wilson have gone and done it though, with the Wilson X Connected Basketball, which includes four game modes, a connection to an app and the ability to track your shots, is the result. It’ll cost you $200 (R2,700) if you’re keen but these are only available in the States at the moment.
Samsung have made some great headway with their curved smartphone displays and the Edge handsets are a testament to that. But they’re going to be releasing a foldable smartphone, one which makes use of the flexible displays that the company has been working on, if a report from website Weibo is correct. The rumoured device, which is apparently known as Project Valley or Project V, might launch as soon as January next year. Some specs for the phones (there are apparently two) are being thrown around, with a Snapdragon 620 and Snapdragon 820 being expected. Also thought to be arriving are 3GB of RAM, a microSD slot and a non-removable battery but we’re going to wait till something official surfaces on this one – This is a bit too futuristic.
