Over 35.9 Million PlayStation 4 Systems Sold
Sony announced today that it sold more than 5.7 million PlayStation 4 systems throughout the 2015 holiday season. This brings the total units sold to over 35.9 million, as of January 3, 2016.
It's not only the system that sold well, the company says. Thirty-five million PlayStation 4 games were sold in retail stores and through digital download over the past few months.
Adding to its success, the company notes that 60 percent more users subscribed to its PlayStation Plus service at the end of 2015, compared to the same time last year.
“We are absolutely delighted that so many customers have selected PS4 as the best place to play throughout this holiday season and that the PS4 community is growing more than ever,” says Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment.
Fossil Adds Another Incognito Smartwatch to Its Q Wearables Lineup
Fossil is adding another smartwatch to its Q series of wearables. The new Q54 Pilot offers notification alerts and fitness tracking in a package that looks like a normal watch. This is the smartwatch for people who don’t want to look like they’re wearing a computer on their wrist.
The Q54 Pilot is Fossil’s third smartwatch, with the Q Grant and Q Founder coming before. While the Q Founder is Fossil’s only smartwatch running Google’s Android Wear operating system, both the Q54 Pilot and Q Grant are incognito smartwatches disguised as a regular watch.
PC Release Date Announced for Rise of the Tomb Raider
Square Enix has announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider will be coming to PC on January 28.
Rise of the Tomb Raider was released in November for Xbox One and 360, but we knew that it would be coming to PC in "early 2016." It should also be coming out for PS4 in "Holiday 2016," but we don't have a firm release date for that yet.
“The PC release of Rise of the Tomb Raider continues the positive momentum from our highly successful partnership and collaboration with Microsoft for the launch on Xbox One and Xbox 360,” said Scot Amos, co-Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics in a statement.
Redemption as Former Donkey Kong Champ Regains Record
Wes Copeland has regained the Donkey Kong Arcade world championship with a score of 1,190,000.
As DonkeyKongBlog reports, within minutes of Copeland’s high-score feat, former champ Robbie Lakeman took to Twitch in the hopes of repeating history. Back in September of 2015, Lakeman – the then record holder – lost his title to Copeland when Copeland racked up a score of 1,170,500. Following Copeland’s win, Lakeman set out to regain his lost crown, and within just six hours of Copeland beating him, had set a new world record of 1,172,100.
UK Deals – Rise of The Tomb Raider under £20
The Movies that Influenced The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker who both wears his influences on his sleeve and plasters them all over his movies. So when IGN sat down with the writer-director to discuss new film The Hateful Eight, we asked what audiences should watch to prepare for his brutal and bloody western. Two of his choices were easy and obvious, being violent oaters that take place in the snow. And the third was a book that he was in the process of reading, but by an author whose work is an obvious influence on the Hateful Eight script.
But we’ll let QT explain, and also reveal the somewhat dubious Poirot-inspired nickname that Samuel L. Jackson picked up during the shoot…
“If they wanted to prepare a little bit, one of the things about this western is… I do like dealing in genres, but I also like dealing in sub-genres. So there’s westerns, and then there’s spaghetti westerns. In this case there’s also the sub, sub-genre of snow westerns. And snow westerns – there’s not that many of them, but they’re there.”
CES 2016: Logitech Updates the G502 Proteus Spectrum Gaming Mouse with RGB Lighting
Logitech’s popular G502 Proteus mouse is getting a minor refresh for 2016 but fixes one of the biggest gripes about the mouse: the lack of customizable lighting. The new G502 Proteus Spectrum will now feature full RGB control, allowing you to choose from 16.8 million colors with the company’s software. You’ll be able to choose a specific color or use lighting effects to continuously cycle through the color spectrum. If lights aren’t you thing, you can disable lighting altogether.
2015: The Triumphant Return of Single Player
In today’s blockbuster video game landscape, the more social your experience is, the better. Connectivity, shareability, retention, evolution: keep players online, all the time. The feeling of being truly ‘alone’ in a video game is fast becoming a thing of the past. After all, single player experiences tend to be finite, and thus increasingly redundant as games strain at the seams to be as eternal as possible.
But in 2015, this prevailing wisdom felt surprisingly absent. Last year, games like Fallout 4, Bloodborne, The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain dominated our attention, and all were focused primarily on the single player experience.
You Can Control BB-8 with Sphero’s New Watch
Sphero's app-controlled BB-8 can now be controlled by the Force—sort of. The company showcased a motion-tracking watch at CES 2016 that'll control the adorable droid using just hand gestures.
Not only will you be able to move BB-8 using push and pull movements, the droid will also respond to combination arm and hand motions to control BB-8's head.
The wearable is only a prototype right now, and Sphero hasn't announced a price or release date. According to Gizmodo, the final version of the watch will look "completely different" when it ships later this year, but the "functionality will be very similar to what was demonstrated" at CES.
Toyota Implements Ford’s SmartDeviceLink Software
Ford has a new partner in its infotainment war against Google and Apple. The company announced that Toyota has signed on as the latest car manufacturer to implement Ford's open-source smartphone app interface into its products.
The interface, called SmartDeviceLink (SDL), was created in efforts to "accelerate an industry standard" while not limiting customers to just one or two in-vehicle infotainment interfaces. "With common industry software," Ford says, "developers can focus on creating the best experience on one platform—