Steamboy Is A Portable Steam Machine; Coming In 2015

Portable handheld gaming is a fantastic thing, which could be why we really shouldn’t be surprised that someone is trying to build a handheld Steam Machine. The device resembles a Sony PlayStation Vita with a few extra buttons and the Steam Controller’s haptic feedback touchpads. It also has a 5-inch display, and the team behind it claims that it should be able to run most Steam games.
Details about the internals are decidedly light. The Steamboy Machine team has revealed that it will be fitted with 4GB of RAM and a quad-core processor – although what processor this is has not been mentioned. AMD’s A4 APU is the most likely suspect for running this sort of machine as it would be the most space efficient chip. One thing the team did not mention is the battery life of the portable console; which might be worryingly short considering what it is trying to do.




 It might just be that this is the kind of machine that makes buying all those pixel based indie games worth it. Risk of Rain or BroForce on a handheld would actually make this console worth having. Provided it achieves its goal of a release some time in 2015

World Cup 2014

Shakira - LA LA LA

Team Fortress 2 Announces New Taunts; Releases Short Film To Celebrate

Popular hat collecting game Team Fortress 2 has announced a series of new taunts. This time players will be able to dance and get down to mock opponents, or to simply waste time while the game is going on. These new taunts include doing the conga and square dancing (unless you’re the spy). At worse, players will also be able to play rock-paper-scissors for whatever reason strikes their fancy. The rest of the taunts are documented in a blog post on the Team Fortress 2 blog, along with the obligatory humourous description.
New achievements have been added as part of the new taunt update. Essentially rewarding you for mocking your enemies in new and interesting ways. Prepare for TF2 games to feature a large amount of dancing while everyone tries out these new moves.




To celebrate the new taunts, a new short film – titled Expiration Date – has been released. This may be the longest story by Valve so far, and actually tries to tell a proper story. Like the previous shorts that introduced the characters, Expiration Date captures the kind of surreal reality that exists in the Team Fortress 2 universe; although it doesn’t feature much of everyone’s favourite Pyro. As a warning, it might turn some people off bread for a while though.

Vivo is the Next Chinese Smartphone Company Coming to Malaysia

 

With the amount of interest in Chinese smartphones these days, many are wondering if there are more of the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, and others like them hidden within the Great Wall. The good news is…of course. Huawei and Lenovo have taken great strides in improving their smartphone lineup, while OnePlus has what it calls the “2014 flagship killer”.
There’s another name you should take notice, as they have already set up base in Malaysia: Vivo.
Vivo is a brand that many may not have heard of, or may be vaguely familiar to those familiar with the smartphone industry. To those who follow the Chinese smartphone scene, Vivo once held the crown as the makers of the thinnest smartphone in the world (the Vivo X3) and also developed the world’s first smartphone with a 2K resolution display (the Vivo Xplay 3S). It has also built a reputation for including some of the best audio chips into its devices.

The Vivo Xshot

Its 2014 flagship, the Xshot was just announced last month. Like Oppo’s Find 7 and 7a flagship, there are two variants of the Xshot: the high-end “flagship” variant and a slightly lower-specced Elite. The Xshot is an Android smartphone with a 5.2-inch Full HD IPS display, 2600mAh battery and of course, LTE connectivity. The flagship variant packs in a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz quad-core chipset with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, while the Elite variant sports a lower-end Snapdragon 800 2.3GHz processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. Both variants will also feature a microSD card slot that supports up to 128GB cards.

 The differentiating feature of the Xshot smartphones is in its camera. Both the Xshot flagship and Elite variants sport Sony’s latest second-generation stacked CMOS 13MP sensor, paired with a bright f/1.8 6p lens. In addition to a dual-tone LED flash module, the rear camera sensor also sports optical image stabilisation (OIS). In front, there’s a massive 8MP f/2.4 sensor with wide-angle lens…complete with an LED flash.

The Vivo Xplay 3S

Perhaps the best part of this all is the fact that we may not have to wait long until we see it for ourselves. As we mentioned, Vivo has already set up base (quietly) in Malaysia, and has recently opened an official thread in our forums, showing off the Xplay 3S smartphone. Later, it was also announced that the flagship Xshot models will be coming to Malaysia next month – July 20, to be exact – for a retail price of RM1799 for the flagship model and RM1599 for the Elite variant.

 Besides the Xshot, the other Vivo smartphones making their way to the country are the Vivo X3S (which has been spotted in the country since last month), Xplay 3S, and the lower-end Y22, Y15 and Y11 models. Alongside the forum thread, Vivo Malaysia also has an official Facebook page – though it doesn’t seem to be updated as often as the forum thread.