console

Consumer electronics have staged a recovery this year.

Consumer electronics makers are expected to grab sales of $340.4 billion for 2010, up 6.2 percent from the $320.7 billion seen in 2009, according to data released yesterday by iSuppli. That contrasts with last year when sales dropped 4.4 percent compared with 2008.

"As shown in the early results from Black Friday, consumer confidence levels in 2010 are higher in all regions of the world than they were in 2009, and buyers are more inclined to acquire new devices or upgrade old electronics equipment," Jordan Selburn, … Read more

We recently looked at gaming service OnLive and its MicroConsole device, which streams cloud-based PC games to your TV. Today, the company is announcing a flat-rate plan, which bundles some of its games together in an all-you-can-eat package for $9.99 per month.

Available to users of both the MicroConsole and OnLive's PC/Mac client software, the flat-rate package is called the PlayPack, and a free beta version is live right now for MicroConsole owners. The full version will be available January 15 with about 40 games.

We checked out the beta version last night, and there are a … Read more

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Acer unveils a dual touchscreen laptop called the Iconia

Angry Birds, the popular mobile phone game, will come to a game console near you sometime next year

The U.S. military launches its own version of YouTube called MilTube

Microsoft revamps Bing Movies

Microsoft and Southwest Airlines are bringing Santa to an airport gate near you for picture time

A new social network for readers called Copia launched this week

Facebook is close to scoring a trademark for the word "face"

Nintendo enjoyed an exceptionally strong past week.

The game company announced today that it sold 900,000 DS units and 600,000 Wii consoles in the U.S. from November 21 to 27, according to internal estimates. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said that such success means U.S. consumers "bought about 9,000 Nintendo hardware systems non-stop for every hour of every day during the week of Black Friday."

Nintendo's announcement is an important one, considering the issues it has been experiencing over the past few months.

Last month, Nintendo reported a disappointing six-month period … Read more

Angry Birds on the big screen? No, a movie deal hasn't been inked yet, but console versions are in the works. According to a BBC blog, Rovio, the developer of the megapopular smartphone game, is hoping to release Angry Birds on the PS3, XBox 360, and Wii next year.

Also in the works: Angry Birds 2. The new game will apparently have more pigs--and they'll be more active.

"It won't be a sequel or a prequel but a different type of game featuring the same characters," said Rovio CEO Peter Vesterbacka. "The pigs will … Read more

As a $99 set-top box, OnLive's MicroConsole offers an intriguing low-cost alternative to traditional living room game consoles, which can cost two to three times as much. We've just gotten our hands on a final hardware unit and tested it with a variety of games and controllers.

If you're not familiar with the OnLive streaming game service, it's essentially cloud-based PC gaming. The original PC client allows nearly any laptop or desktop to play high-end PC games by offloading the CPU- and GPU-intensive tasks of actually running the game software to a remote render farm, then beaming the gameplay back to you as a streaming video.

The PC-based version worked surprisingly well, so expectations are high for this standalone TV-friendly box. Ditching the computer altogether, the MicroConsole acts as a dongle and media streamer, connecting to your TV via HDMI (or component video) and to the Internet via an Ethernet cable (Wi-Fi is still wonky on the PC client, so we don't expect to see it on the MicroConsole anytime soon).

The setup is simple enough: if you have an existing account you can log directly into it, and one of the nice unintended consequences of cloud-based gaming is that your saved games and library travel with you wherever you log in. The interface is identical to the PC client, and includes a marketplace for buying games (you're actually buying a license to play the game on OnLive's servers), a list of your purchased games, and an arena view, which lets you drop in and watch other players' live game streams (this can be turned off in the privacy settings). … Read more

We've been reasonably impressed to date with OnLive's cloud-based game service, which allows nearly any Internet-connected laptop or desktop to play a variety of high-end PC games via a unique streaming system. The company's long-awaited MicroConsole, which skips the computer altogether and streams games directly to your TV, finally has a release date and price.

The OnLive MicroConsole ships December 2, for $99, and includes a free game (games typically cost the same as retail boxed versions, around $49) and a wireless game controller.

If you're not familiar with the service, OnLive works by offloading the … Read more

Earlier today The Unofficial Apple Weblog posted a story comparing the number of games available for the iOS platform to the total amount of console games made in the last 25 years. To the surprise of no one, TUAW concluded that there are roughly three times as many iOS games than consoles titles. The comparison was done to demonstrate the "staggering size" of iOS' game library, but we're not sure the assessment is entirely fair.

The post has since been updated twice (as of 6 p.m. ET) with the author responding to user comments, exploring the … Read more

U.S. consumers crave their gadgets, but the cell phone rules them all, according to a new Pew Internet study.

Among the 3,000 adults surveyed, 85 percent own cell phones. Mobile phones are especially in demand among younger adults, with 96 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds owning one. But even among those 65 and older, 58 percent have a cell phone.

The second hottest device--a computer--is owned by 76 percent of those surveyed. Breaking down that category, the laptop has grown in popularity and is now owned by 52 percent versus 30 percent in early 2006. Meanwhile, desktop ownership … Read more