The first annual 3D Gaming Summit went down just last week. There is a convention for just about everything these days, even this. Joystiq’s Mike Schramm hosted a panel discussing the global 3D landscape, which “quickly spun off into a debate about whether 3D is really what we need as gamers.”

With Sony jumping the gun on 3D gaming tech (so much so that games can’t keep up with them), what makes the industry’s movers and shakers so sure that this is the next vista for gaming? More on this and a potentially practical application of 3D behind the cut. (more…)

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

More than 140,000 people bought a flying, sparkling horse for $25 last week. Now that would be an incredible steal (a flying horse made of stars for $25?! Goodbye to commercial flights!) if it weren’t digital. That’s right, what I guess now to be nearly 200,000 folks — if not more — have bought WoW’s Celestial Steed. As Massively’s Seraphina Brennan points out, that’s half the cost of an expansion pack. We’re going to let that set in and take this discussion behind the cut. (more…)

Now, I know we’ve touched base on something similar to this before, but this is just too good to pass up. Joystiq recently found a new studio named Killspace Studios via Supererogatory and after some digging found they have recently purchased the domains ApocalypseNowGame.com and WarIsNotAGame.net (just sitting there, waiting). 1UP drew the conclusion that the new studio comprised of former developers from studios such as Obsidian and Pandemic as well as a few others might be creating a game surrounding the award winning film, Apocalypse Now.

You know, that award winning Francis Coppola directed film that starred Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall. The same flick that many believe set the standard for cinematography as one of the greatest films of all time. Yeah, that one. Not to mention the studios founding statement by talent agency, Digital Development Management, says the 40-strong team’s specialty is “action” games for the “[Xbox] 360, PS3, Wii, PC, iPhone [and] Facebook”. Oh boy, this ought to be good.  (more…)

Microsoft Student Insiders interview Twitter Platform Team from Hilary Pike on Vimeo.

To end our journey to Las Vegas for MIX 10 in March, Tom Ziegmann and I sat in on Raffi Krikorian’s session titled “Adding the Where to the When of Social Applications” to learn more about our favorite internet obsession, Twitter. More specifically, we learned a bit about where the social is network headed, but still wonder why it’s watching us. It’s kind of creepy.

Thankfully, we later had the chance to ask him some burning questions about geotagging, which helps reveal exactly where the 7-11 is in which your friend just bought milk (you heard it here first, folks). More importantly, we discussed geotagging’s social and security implications as well just who is the real Raffi. Speaking of which, I need to form the search party!

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

We apologize (sort of) for the completely unrelated image, but that reference has been ignored for far too long. Anyway, Nintendo will be releasing an eReader game for the Nintendo DS called 100 Classic Books this summer, says Kotaku. Wait, that’s our inspiring piece of news for this week?

Here’s the catch: the game appears to have no ESRB rating and simply states, “This product does not require age verification.” That’s a bit odd. And here I thought all games required an ESRB rating to be released for retail sale.

Now, it’s easy to argue that this is barely a video game and more of an application, which may not need any sort of rating. While it does still provide influential content, writing 500+ words on a petty argument would be wasting our time. So, let’s keep it light(ish) this week and give a brief history of the ESRB and poke some fun at it, shall we? (more…)

Microsoft Principal Researcher, MIX 10 keynote speaker and all around design guru Bill Buxton took time out of his insanely busy day to enlighten us Student Insiders about the importance of always present Natural User Interfaces (NUIs). If you have a solid 24 minutes (seeing as you’re on this site right now, it’s safe to assume you might), take a look as Tom Ziegmann and I get schooled in design theory, team integration and… hockey? Check out the video here and come on back to tell us what you think.

Everyone needs to let out a bit of that pent up aggravation every once in a while. I get that. However, after finally getting around to watching the most recent Medal of Honor trailer, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy on a few levels. Now, before we get assaulted with hate mail and rabid comments: these words and opinions are 100 percent mine and not representative of Geekadelphia as a whole.

In recent years I’ve been turned off to just about every first-person shooter (FPS) out there aside from Team Fortress 2, the Left 4 Dead series and the recent free-to-play offerings Quake Live and Battlefield Heroes for essentially one reason: the attempts at extreme realism. More on why exactly this is bothersome behind the cut. (more…)

Associated Press’ Windows Phone 7 news application

Thanks for clicking your way into the Microsoft Student Insider Feature Series, where I get the incredible opportunity to speak with some of the movers and shakers of Microsoft’s various product offerings. While at MIX 10 last week, Jeremy Bray (Microsoft’s Windows Student Insider) and I sat down with Senior Director of Product Management on the Mobile Communications Team, Todd Brix. As you may have already guessed, his dreams are pretty much filled with dancing Windows Phone 7 devices, touch screens aglitter. Let’s get right into what’s in store for us this coming holiday season.

Normally, these types of products have a specific target audience be it enterprise or casual. Brix claims that Microsoft is trying to create something that brings those two walks of life together.

“We’re trying to build an experience that spans their personal life, their work life and the fun and playful things they do around that all the time,” says Brix referring to the Windows Phone 7 target audience.”That’s really the genesis of what we’re doing.”

The Windows Phone 7 team has accomplished this through apps and services that blend the consumer with the professional with fun services like Xbox Live integration or Zune functionality and useful ones like the Microsoft Office hub, according to Brix. It would be interesting to see a business professional use a Windows Phone 7 device to pull up documents during a meeting using the Office service only to check his Gamerscore compared to his work buddies’ during lunch. More on what Windows Phone 7 means for you and I after the break. (more…)

Supposedly the brief specs on Nvidia’s yet-to-be released GeForce GTX 470 and 480 video cards have been leaked and boast video RAM levels of up to 1536 MB. Another year, another release of a ludicrously powerful graphics processor. One can’t help but think, “Doesn’t this stuff have to plateau at some point?”

To answer the question I asked for you, why yes. Yes it does. A theory has been floating around for a long time dubbed The Uncanny Valley that seeks to explain why no matter how hard we try, The Matrix will never happen (sorry folks). (more…)

Welcome to Geekadelphia’s weekly discussion column, Cofffee Talk, where we talk about the finer topics concerning video games, technology and all the other things you can’t talk about with your slightly-less-geeky friends. Have questions or suggestions? Send an email to geekadelphia@gmail.com or tweet with us. Follow me on Twitter if you’d like to keep this week’s discussion alive.

A strange question that inspires visions of our favorite cyberpunk novels and The Matrix, but in all honesty it might be one that we should be considering more sincerely. Our friends at Technabob recently posted the video of Carnegie Mellon University professor Jesse Schell’s presentation at DICE 2010. Let’s just say it was strange (just watch the video), but poignant in the sense that while you may not agree with his ideas, this may not be far off the mark of where we are headed in the next twenty years.

What Schell is talking about here is a future where instead of folks with marketing and advertising degrees telling us how to act, what to like and, most importantly, what to buy we’ll be directed by those with degrees in game design. His supporting evidence is largely the goal and reward based games of Facebook like Zynga’s Farmville and Mafia Wars and the achievement driven meta games that many consoles and PC games host today. Consider what motivates you Farmville addicts and achievement junkies as we take a look beyond the jump. (more…)

Thanks for clicking to another edition of Geekadelphia’s Microsoft Student Insider Feature Series where I, this year’s Microsoft Expression Studio Insider, give you guys and gals a glimpse into the lives of select members of the Expression Studio team. This week we have the infinitely interesting (who else can create an adorable elvish lizard ?) Arturo Toledo, a Product Manager on the UX Platform and Tools Team. Let’s get into a bit more of what his job entails as well as some of the interesting Silverlight features he showed while at Redmond last month.

Arturo, originally from Mexico with a background in architecture, used to work with the Expression Team but has recently joined a Silverlight team of 15 folks. Arturo’s team is tasked with focusing on designers, or those concerned with the User Experience (UX), and letting them know why they should care about Silverlight. More on why he feels designers should be looking to Silverlight right now behind the cut. (more…)

After reading a recent Joystiq post highlighting some incredible artwork from various deviantART users, I began to reminisce of the good ol’ days. It was just me, my SNES and my paltry selection of games back then, but boy did I play them until it was time for the rubbing alcohol and Q-Tips.

Being one of the kids who was behind the times on my block (and arguably still is), I was popping in games like Super Mario All Stars and Super Metroid while my friends were rocking it to Star Fox 64 and Tomb Raider. While looking at these endearing renditions of some of my favorite childhood classics, all I could think about was Ardy and his goofy Kirby-knockoff sidekick, Pec. Yes, Ardy Lightfoot for the SNES is one of my favorite games of all time… and it’s absolutely awful. Find out why I love Ardy so much and more importantly, why this is all relevant, after the jump. (more…)