planets

preGAME 14: Alan Wake

This week on preGAME, we shine a light through the creepy forest to bring you a live demo of Alan Wake a week before it hits stores. The game tells the story of an author who travels to a small mountain town on vacation only to be confronted by a terrifying dark force.

But before we venture into the depths with Alan Wake, we'll bring you three brand-new trailers for a trio of games we're really excited for. Tune in and watch as we screen new videos for Enslaved, Singularity, and LittleBigPlanet 2.

Then, it's onto this … Read more

Create your own games in LittleBigPlanet 2

Following Friday's unofficial confirmation of LittleBigPlanet 2, Sony on Monday made the game's existence official. Monday morning, the PlayStation Blog took the wraps off the sequel, which first surfaced in April via a loose-lipped musician's Twitter post. That outing came five months after a level designer at the game's developer, Media Molecule, shot down sequel talk, saying a retail follow-up would be "counterproductive" to the game's massive community.

Monday, Sony made much of the achievements of said community--which has created more than 2 million levels for LittleBigPlanet--when it formally announced LittleBigPlanet 2, which … Read more

Lonely Planet guides ash-clouded iPhone users

Are you stuck under an ash cloud in Europe, with nothing but your iPhone to keep you company? Lonely Planet wants to take you out for some fun times, by knocking down its city guides to the low, low price of free.

Apps for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Vienna are all enjoying the price cut until Thursday, April 22.

Read more of "Lonely Planet offers free iPhone city guides for volcano victims" at Crave UK.

Buzz Out Loud 1203: The potato radius (podcast)

Pluto's in danger of insult again, as scientists decide that anything bigger than a potato should be a dwarf planet. Or something like that. We also dig into why Apple would suddenly disqualify any third-party compilers from being used to make iPhone apps. And the long-awaited iPod Nano scratch lawsuit is settled. Our national nightmare is over.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1203

The 404 537: Where we're hoarding empty bottles of hot sauce (podcast)

With Wilson nursing a flu, Natali Del Conte comes in to save the day and somehow manages to work up the nerve to challenge me to a habanero chili pepper eating competition. Clearly she doesn't know I was president of Edison High School's Fire Eater's Club and eat Scoville units for breakfast. Then again, her last name is Del Conte, which automatically gives her an advantage. May the best Justin Yu win.

Due to the depressing rain New York suffered over the weekend, the three of us spent the last two days indoors--and how each of us passed our time reveals a bit about our personalities. Natali checked out the 3D showing of "Alice in Wonderland" to see if the movie lives up to the hype; Jeff gives himself a pat on the back for finishing three video games in two days; and I discovered the marketing magic that is The Dragulator, a promotional campaign for RuPaul's show "Drag Race" that lets you see how you'd look as a drag queen, and I'm not gonna lie--I make this look gooooood.

It's been a long time coming, but Fandango launched a new "mobile ticket program" today that enables moviegoers to download a scannable bar code to use in lieu of a physical movie ticket.

The service will definitely save time and paper, but it also opens up a whole new world to hackers, who could easily forge a ticket using a fabricated bar code. The program is currently being tested in more than 100 theaters, including a few in NYC, so we'll try it out and bring you a special report soon.

EPISODE 535 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

PlanetSolar thinks big with solar boat

A skipper's dream of sailing across the ocean using solar power is about to come true. More impressively, he'll be sailing on arguably the world's largest pollution-free yacht, the PlanetSolar, which was unveiled Thursday at the HDW Shipyard in Germany.

Raphael Domjan, the skipper and CEO of the PlanetSolar project, regards this event as a confirmation that "the solar-powered boat is now a reality." Since the '80s, Domjan has been dreaming of touring the world using the minimum amount of energy. He envisioned a solar-powered boat in 2004 and the PlanetSolar project has been in … Read more

IBM touts Smarter Buildings push

IBM is hoping to use technology to create greener, smarter buildings.

Big Blue announced Monday that it will team up with partners and customers to venture into the next phase of its Smarter Planet initiative: Smarter Buildings. The goal is to help buildings, manufacturing plants, and other facilities consume less energy and water and make them easier to operate.

Announced Monday, one of IBM's new partnerships is with Johnson Controls, a manufacturer of products that optimize energy use in buildings. The two plan to combine Johnson's energy-efficient technologies with IBM's Tivoli software to offer customers a way … Read more

preGAME 03: X10 Showcase

This week on preGAME, hosts Jeff Bakalar and Mark Licea take a look back at all of the big announcements from last week's Microsoft X10 conference in San Francisco. Today's show is chock-full of debut trailers, announcements, and first look game play video of some of 2010's most anticipated Xbox 360-centric games.

But before we get into the big announcements, we'll chat about the death of local multiplayer. Long gone are the days of local four-player split screen action like Goldeneye 64. Now more than ever, game developers are overlooking the game play element that defined the "party game." Why is this upsetting trend so popular? And why do game developers choose to leave it out?

All this plus the week's headlines and releases on preGAME!

Want to be a part of our live taping? Make sure you head to http://cnet.com/live/pregame every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern. If you missed any of the stories we talk about on today's preGAME, make sure to check out our links below.

Xbox Live coming to Windows Phone 7 Street Fighter IV coming to iPhone LA Noire screenshots finally surface Sony will show off motion controller at GDC Jeff's X10 wrap-up post on Crave… Read more

Microsoft X10 conference wrap-up

After a four-year hiatus, Microsoft held its X10 conference this week in San Francisco primarily to announce a bunch of release dates for some notable 360-only games due out this year. The company also flexed its exclusivity muscles by showing off some content that'll only be available on Xbox 360.

We've got all the highlights from the event below, along with all of the show's debut trailers in the video playlist to the right.

Halo: Reach: No solid release date for the game, but Halo 3: ODST owners can get a taste of the title's multiplayer … Read more

IBM games highlight benefits of 'Smarter Planet'

People don't usually associate IBM with video games, but a couple of interactive games now rigged up at Florida's Epcot theme park have Big Blue's stamp all over them. They're part of the revised "Smarter Planet," an experiential exhibit aimed at highlighting how technology is helping to ease global problems such as road traffic, city crime, and subpar local water supplies.

Through one "match" game, guests will discover that more than 2 billion people are using mobile phones to open and use bank accounts for the first time; or that only 11 percent of the United States money supply is cash; or that by unplugging household appliances while not in use homeowners can save cash, up to $286 every year. From the same kiosks, guests can take a poll and compare their answers with those of other visitors.

Another game, called Runtime and created by Disney, lets players personalize their avatars and run, jump, and dance through a computing time line that journeys through the Babbage computer all the way to the Internet, spotlighting IBM's achievements along the way. Guests can also e-mail their personalized version of the game to any computer in case they want to dance through the evolution of the ThinkPad at home.

The exhibit--which opened Friday and runs indefinitely--is powered by an IBM Smarter Data Center, part of the company's larger Smarter Planet initiative aimed at marketing green solutions to world problems.… Read more