Would the iPad Take Over Casual Home Gaming?

Get ready, because this one may get big: 44% of all iPad applications being tested on the actual device are games. Hey Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, the iPhone/iPod titan is getting its tentacles all over the living room.

The iPhone/iPod monster has positioned itself as the preferred mobile gaming platform for developers and is quickly becoming one of the largest game platforms in the planet, with 75 million iPhone OS devices sold in just 2.5 years. The current king of all game platforms sold 125 million units of the much cheaper Nintendo DS in five years and two months.

Now Apple is moving the action into the living room. Would gaming be one of main purposes of the iPad? Would the iPad become the next casual home gaming juggernaut, like the Wii? The market will tell in time, but apparently developers think that the possibility is there. Their reasoning seems solid: The iPhone/iPod demonstrated that you don't need buttons and a d-pad to offer a good gaming experience to most people (not only hardcore gamers). It's the same road first taken by the Nintendo DS and then the Wii. Both have a big amount of incredibly successful games that don't use buttons at all and require little involvement and time. In fact, it seems like consumers—not hardcore gamers—favor that kind of interaction, along with games that can be easily shared and enjoyed by a few people at the same time.

The iPad Sharing Factor

Like the iPhone/iPod Touch, the iPad is a continuation of this road. Unlike its handheld brothers, however, the bigger screen of the iPad is good to share the game experience with other people. I can easily picture two or three people sitting together on a sofa, playing with one iPad, passing it around in turns. I can also imagine multiple iPads in the same household, and people playing networked games in separate screens. Or people around a table, playing a board game touching the iPad and using their iPhones. Except this board game would have spectacular graphics and be fully animated. And perhaps have remote players connected too.

Given the general direction of the market and the possibilities of the platform, it's not surprising that game developers are pushing so hard for the iPad. It's yet to be seen if the Apple device would be a success or not, but having such a developer support is going to play a big role. The fact is that developers are betting that it will be a success in the gaming department. 44% is a huge figure, especially considering that the next category—entertainment—only grabs 14%. And especially considering that this is a completely unknown device. They don't have too much to lose, since the games can target both the iPad and the iPhone/iPod Touch.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait for a fully-networked Tron light cycle game for the iPad, with each device being a bike cockpit. [Business Week]

Palm shares take 25 percent plunge after downer earnings announcement

Remember that wild January day a bit over a year ago, when Palm debuted webOS and shares went wild? Well, after months of setbacks in the sales arena, and a rough $22 million Q3 loss announced yesterday, Palm's stocks took over a 25 percent dive today, dipping below $5 for the first time since the Pre was announced. At the time of this writing things seem to be leveling off a bit, but it's the most damage the shares have seen since October of 2009. Morgan Joseph analyst Ilya Grozovsky has downgraded the stock to "sell" and set a target price at $0. Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek has set a similar target, saying that he sees a "complete lack of earnings visibility." So, candlelit vigil time? Imminent buyout? Riots in the streets? Hardly. Palm's own Jon Rubinstein said in the earnings announcement that the company is "looking forward to upcoming launches with new carrier partners" which should (hopefully) brighten spirits a bit, and we haven't heard a single credible buyout rumor, despite plenty of wild conjecture. There are also still a pair of analyst hold outs (just two, to be exact) that have buy ratings on the stock, reportsThomson Reuters. As for rioting? Well, that's up to you. No matter what, Palm has some serious soul searching to do.

Virtusphere's virtual reality hamster ball put to the test

For eons we've wondered what it would be like to walk around in a bona fide Virtusphere, and at GDC last week we finally got our chance. The large plastic cage can turn and roll in any direction, and once replete with a wireless head-mounted display and fake gun, we were ready to take on some polygonal alien baddies. Getting into the cage is surprisingly easy, but unfortunately once we had a screen strapped to our head our well-honed sense of balance was right out the window, and we found ourselves staggering around a bit as we got used to the motion of the cage. The real military versions have a motion sensing gun controller, but we had to do all our aiming with our head, which didn't help. After a minute or so we got used to the "momentum" involved in moving the cage, which felt pretty great, but we'd say our favorite part about the experience was just being able to turn in place to confront baddies -- there's something about a few well placed steps that really blows away a left or right tug on our 360 controller's analog stick. At the end of the day the sheer size, cost, and ultra-dated graphics has us hardly pining for one of these in our living rooms, but with a bit more work on the gaming end (and a working gun pointer) we could see this as the arcade experience to beat. Check out a video of our harrowing experience (from outside and inside) after the break.

Virtusphere virtual reality hamster ball put to the test

AiLive shows off its LiveMove 2 software for building MotionPlus and PlayStation Move gestures

If you've been following closely, there are really two sorts of input available to the PlayStation Move. The one that gets the most love and screen time is the camera-based, 3D meatspace tracking that the PlayStation Eye performs in conjunction with the fancy colored ball at the end of the PlayStation Move wand, but most of the actual gameplay we've seen is in truth much more similar to the Wii's MotionPlusthan Sony might want to let on. The MotionPlus and PS Move have very similar configurations of gyroscopes and accelerometers, and actually use the same software from AiLive (co-creators of MotionPlus) for developing the gesture recognition that goes into games. We actually got to see the LiveMove 2 development environment in action, and it's pretty impressive: basically you tell a computer what gesture you want to perform (like "fist pump," for instance) and then perform a bunch of examples of that movement. LiveMove then figures out the range of allowable movement, and in playback mode shows you whether you're hitting the mark. AiLive showed us gestures as complicated as a Graffiti (of Palm OS yore) handwriting recognition in the air, built with just a few example movements from people back at their offices. So, this is great news for developers dealing with the significant complication of all these sensors, but at the same time we can't help but be a little disappointed. LiveMove 2 doesn't even use the PlayStation Eye, and as we mentioned in our hands-on impressions of PlayStation Move, we could really sense that a lot of our in-game actions were built from predefined gestures, not us interacting with the 3D environment in any "real" or physics-based way. It's great tech either way, but hopefully that's something that can be improved upon by launch or soon after. Check out a demo of LiveMove in action after the break.

Word, Excel and OneNote for Windows Phone 7 Series revealed

We actually haven't seen any official shots of the Office apps for Windows Phone 7 Series, but now that Microsoft's emulator has been hacked and unlocked, we've got a glimpse of what creating a Word doc in OneNote looks like -- and while there's a high probability that this a super-early version of the app, it's still revealing in how drastically minimal it is. Microsoft says most people just want to make minor edits and leave comments to Office docs while on the go, not make large edits with copy and paste, so we'd expect to see track changes in the final version, but something tells us the main interface isn't going to look tremendously different than this. One more shot and the video with Word after the break -- hit the source for the second vid with Excel.

BlackBerry OS 6.0 leaked?

Are these grabs from RIM's refreshed BlackBerry OS 6.0 or just fanart from some sleepy design school student meant to trick the tech press? We don't know, but BBLeaks claims that they come "highly regarded as real from one of our best connects." But before getting too worked up, it's worth noting the bizarre similarities between these grabs (San Francisco, the weather widget colors, Haiti tweet, and font) and the slide pulled from that "Super Apps" developer webinar back in February -- images that RIM called nothing more than mockups of nothing important at the time. Still with a consumer-focused, BlackBerry slider rumored to be making its first appearance next month at RIM's own WES show, well, who knows. Really, does anybody know? Webinar image after the break for your clinical comparison.

HP Slate priced at €400 for June launch, Atom CPU confirmed?

Reputable Spanish publication Clipset has the first concrete report on pricing and internal specs for HP's Slate. Seemingly obtained from HP itself, the €400 ($546) price tag positions the Slate a notch above netbooks and bodes well for the expectation that it'll undercut the iPad's entry level pricing. Straight currency conversations are inadvisable in such situations, so we'll just have to wait until official stickers for the iPad in Europe are known or HP announces US prices for the Slate. Further info includes an Atom CPU, Flash support, USB connectivity, a memory card reader, and a back-mounted webcam (see it after the break). The launch of this Windows 7 device is slated for June, while retail availability in Europe is said to be expected at some point "before September." It's not clear what all that means for the US, but we doubt HP will be making its home turf wait longer than the rest of the world. Rest assured, we'll be reaching out to HP HQ before they've had their first cup of green tea to find out.

5 Potential Business Uses for the iPad

Last week, Apple introduced the iPad to the world. The tablet device, the subject of more rumors than Area 51, provides the functionality of iPhone apps, web surfing, and book reading in a larger handheld device. And with its shockingly low starting price of $499, it’s relatively affordable.

Does Apple’s device have a place in the work setting, though? Should you be snatching up tablets for your employees, or should wait until the iPad adds some more business-friendly features? Does it provide value that a computer or an iPhone doesn’t?

Let’s explore a few practical business cases for the iPad. Hopefully this exercise will help you in deciding whether you should have one as part of your work arsenal. And remember, these are just a few ideas – I’m sure you can think of plenty more:

1. 1. Spreadsheets and Docs On-the-Go: You can purchase iWorks for the iPad ($9.99 per app). That means you can edit docs, fill in spreadsheets, and build presentations. You’re always going to build docs faster in a Mac, but it’s a smart way to edit and make revisions.

2. 2. Social Notetaking: The iPad is compatible with every iPhone app, meaning that you can run Evernote to write down notes in the field, access picture archives from your team, and record voice notes that you can send to others later. Evernote’s one of the best notetaking products on the market, and the iPad will make it far more useful.

3. Portable Screen/Presentation Machine: The device has a crisp display perfect for showing off videos during a presentation. It’s also likely that you can use it as a presentation machine, although you might need an adapter for it.

4. Transferable Customer Display: In a bank, a teller often has to turn his screen towards the customer to show him exactly what’s going on with an account. With an iPad, all the teller or customer service rep has to do is hand it to the customer to review for themselves. Customers can even play with the numbers and options in that type of interface. You could simply build a web app to accomplish this, too.

5. (Nearly) Full Web Access: After the apps, the iPad’s strongest feature is simply its fast and elegant web browsing. The Apple A4 processor helps it load pages rapidly, while the larger screen gives you the opportunity to find whatever you need on the web while on-the-go. 3G access + web browsing is definitely a big win for businesses who have team members that are always on-the-go.