Month: June 2016

The hardware is nice, but without support from major publishers, it could have trouble attracting a mass market. (credit: Kyle Orland)

As impressed as we have been with the technology behind new, consumer-level virtual reality headsets, there has been something important missing from the initial selection of software available for the likes of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive: games from the industry's biggest, most popular publishers. It's still early, but the lack of initial enthusiasm for VR from most AAA studios continues to be a headwind to the technology's potential success.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently verbalized the problem. At the Cowen and Company 44th Annual Technology, Media & Telecom Conference yesterday, the head of the multi-billion-dollar publisher said VR's current $2,000 asking price (when you factor in high-powered PC costs) and need for a dedicated play space limit the potential for mass appeal.

"We have like $300 to spend on an entertainment device and we do not have a dedicated room," he said. "We have a room for a screen, a couch, and controllers. We don’t have something where you stand in a big open space and hold two controllers with something on your head and, you know, not crash into the coffee table. We don’t have that."

An Army soldier wears conceptual "future soldier" armor at the Detroit Auto Show in 2012. If the Special Operations Command's TALOS project is successful, soldiers may wear armored exoskeletons for urban combat in the near future. (credit: US Army)

At this week's Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) cracked the door open a bit on its Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) program—an attempt to create a powered, armored exoskeleton for use by special operations forces such as the Navy's SEALs and the Army's Green Berets. TALOS is the system that led President Barack Obama to announce in 2014 that "we are building Iron Man.”

Navy Commander Anthony Baker of USSOCOM's Joint Acquisition Task Force unveiled the initial list of requirements for TALOS, which is intended to enhance the "comprehensive ballistic protection, situational awareness, and surgical precision and lethality" of special operations troops, particularly in urban combat.

Launched by then-commander of USSOCOM Admiral William McRaven in 2013 as a joint project with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the TALOS program is the latest evolution of "super troop" research that has been underway in secret for decades but has only become practical within the last few years. Initial prototypes demonstrating some of the technologies for TALOS were developed by MIT under the USSOCOM/DARPA program in 2014, and USSOCOM is now on course to produce a full advanced prototype of TALOS by August of 2018.

(credit: Xiaomi)

Chinese company Xiaomi continuously pumps out low-cost electronics, and now it has released an upgraded fitness tracker. The Mi Band 2 is the first activity tracker the company has made with an OLED display, allowing the device to show step count, time, and heart rate. According to Forbes, the Mi Band 2 will cost 149 RMB ($23) in China once it's available.

This is Xiaomi's third fitness tracker: the company's ultra-cheap $13 Mi Band 1 debuted two years ago, and following that was a pulse-monitoring device called the Mi Pulse. The Mi Band 2 keeps the simplistic design of the previous two devices, featuring a thin silicone band and a oval-shaped module, but it adds the .42-inch OLED display, an "upgraded pedometer algorithm," and a 20-day battery life. It also has a single button at the bottom of the screen that will let you scroll through different displays.

In addition to tracking steps, the Mi Band 2 will monitor sleep, and it will vibrate to let you know if you've been sedentary for too long. Still, the display and optical heart rate monitor are key to this device. The display makes it easier to glance down at the device to either check the time or view your step progress, which is something many fitness trackers can do now (though some, like Misfit's products, still go the way of design simplicity). The heart-rate monitor is important not because it's unique technology but because at $23, the Mi Band 2 will be the cheapest device to include one. Most trackers with built-in heart rate monitors, including those from Fitbit and Garmin, are priced at $100 or more.

(credit: M. Phillips/Getty Images)

Following Vivendi's shareholder-backed hostile takeover bid for mobile gaming developer Gameloft, Ubisoft co-founder and Gameloft CEO Michel Guillemot may be about to resign. "A person familiar with the matter" has confirmed Guillemot's pending resignation to Bloomberg, saying that Guillemot will join his brother (and Ubisoft CEO) Yves Guillemot in protecting Ubisoft from a similar Vivendi takeover.

Vivendi has been slowly buying up shares in Ubisoft as far back as October 2015, when it purchased a 6.6 percent share of the company (roughly 7.36 million shares at $161 million (£111 million)). It later upped its stake to 10.39 percent. Ubisoft–which remains a family run business—called the moves "unsolicited and unwelcome" at the time, but Vivendi continued undeterred, purchasing 30 percent of sister company Gameloft.

Vivendi finally convinced shareholders to part with their remaining stock by offering 50 percent over market value. The French media giant is now the majority shareholder at Gameloft, controlling around 56 percent of the vote.