So that's it, folks. Apple's Tim Cook talked with Samsung's Choi Gee-sung on the off-chance that they might be able to reach an out-of-court settlement, and you know what? They agreed to disagree. So the next chapter of the story of the battle for smartphone supremacy will be written by a nine-person jury.

An out-of-court settlement in the billion-dollar patent infringement court case between Apple and Samsung always seemed unlikely, despite the presiding judge, Lucy Koh, telling the two tech giants last week to talk at least once to try to reach some kind of agreement.

On Monday, it was confirmed in the San Jose courtroom that the two sides had indeed been in contact in the last few days. However, no progress was made.

“The CEOs did speak….There was no resolution,” Samsung attorney Kevin Johnson told Judge Koh.

This means that, as expected, the nine-person jury will get to deliver a verdict on the case. With closing arguments set for Tuesday, the jury should begin their deliberations on Wednesday.

In the patent trial, Apple accuses Samsung of copying elements of its iPhone and iPad devices in the design of a number of its own smartphones and tablets, including Samsung’s Galaxy range of mobile devices. The Cupertino company is pressing for a sales ban on these products, and is also fighting for monetary damages.

Samsung, meanwhile, accuses Apple of infringing a number of its patents, including some linked to the way smartphones deal with email attachments, photos and the playing of music files.

On Wednesday last week, Judge Koh, in a last ditch attempt to resolve the case without it going to the jury, told both sides, “It’s time for peace,” urging them to meet outside the courtroom to try to find a resolution to the dispute.

But the chances of success were always slim. Apple boss Tim Cook and his Samsung counterpart, Choi Gee-sung, had already met once before, prior to the start of the trial. That meeting, in April, also came to nothing.

[via The Verge]

It's the strangest teaming of young and old media since Bing Crosby met David Bowie to sing Christmas songs together: Green Day will be turned into pigs to star in a new Angry Birds game to promote their new album.

It is one of those strange stories in which you just know that you’re disappointed with someone for selling out, but you can’t quite work out who: Green Day, potentially the only punk band that still sees itself as being outside of the establishment after being nominated for multiple Tony Awards, has signed a deal withAngry Birds creators Rovio that will not only see the band turned into pigs for a new version of the game, but also an exclusive new track only available for those who complete the game.

I promise, although it really sounds otherwise, this is not a story from the Onion.

Not content with invading the mainstream with a musical version of its popular 2004 album American Idiot, the trio made up of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool have signed a deal that will see them all re-imagined as villainous pigs in a brand new ten-level edition of the Facebook edition for the popular game, Angry Birds Friends, released in the near future. Players that manage to complete all ten levels will be rewarded with the unlock of a new Green Day song titled “Troublemaker.” Whether or not said new song will include any Angry Birds-specific lyrics or touches – The idea of Armstrong foregoing his traditional vocals in order to oink the entire performance in some kind of nod to his new incarnation as a brightly-colored, egg-stealing porker is almost inevitably too much to hope for, sadly – remains to be seen.

In the announcement of the partnership between the band and the game, Armstrong spoke of the band’s love for the game. “It’s such an addictive game that when we first started playing it we couldn’t stop,” he was quoted as saying; accompanying the announcement was a trailer for the game – sadly devoid of any animation featuring the band-members-as-pigs, although there’s a glimpse of them at the very end – that featured the band’s new single, “Oh Love,” which debuted last week. That hints at the true purpose of this game; with “Oh Love” being released last week and this announcement today, it’s clear that the promotional machine is definitely roaring into gear to make sure that as many people as possible are aware of the band’s upcoming three album releases, entitled ¡Uno!, ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! (The albums, recorded simultaneously, will be released two months apart; ¡Uno! is released on September 25, with ¡Dos! following on November 13 and ¡Tré! closing out the release on January 15 2013).

While it’s likely true that Armstrong and cohorts are avid fans of Rovio’s addictive avian attraction, what motivated this surreal moment of cross-media partnership is, sadly, just the chance for cross-promotion between the band and game’s target audiences. Still, it’s hard to be too mad about the partnership; if nothing else, if you really want to punish them, you can always take extra glee as you smash their structures.

The news comes on the heels of survey results TechRadar reported last week that BlackBerry device usage saw a 25 percent slump in the U.S. between September 2011 and July 2012, dropping down to 1 percent by the end of last month.

We list the smartphones rumored to come out in the next few months, including the new iPhone and Windows Phone 8 devices.

We don’t report every leaked shot of every rumored handset — there are blogs for that — but we try to keep you informed about what’s out there and what’s coming up. Lately, we’ve been hearing a number of new rumors and leaks. Below is a list of the major smartphones we’re expecting to see companies like Apple, Samsung, Sony, Nokia, HTC, and Motorola unveil this fall. 

Sony Xperia SL

This phone has been confirmed by Sony via a new page on Sonymobile.com. The Sony Xperia SL is essentially an Xperia S with a couple choice enhancements. The SL will have a 1.7GHz dual-core processor instead of the 1.5GHz dual-core chip in the S and will run the “latest version” of Android — though we’re not sure if that means Android 4.0 (ICS) or 4.1 (Jelly Bean). We’ve asked Sony, but have not yet heard back. No pricing or availability info is yet known. Keep an eye out for this one.

HTC One XXL

HTC hasn’t made a splash this year with its One X, S, or U line of smartphones, though we think they’re pretty great. It hopes to change this with a big “phablet”-sized phone that may compete with the Galaxy Note and come with a 1080p screen resolution, 2GB of RAM, and powerful quad-core Snapdragon processor. While we’re sure HTC is working on something for release this fall, take this rumor with a grain of salt. We haven’t heard much about it since June, though we do think it’s likely that HTC will release the phone on Verizon. Late last year, it released the Rezound and has a good relationship with the big red carrier.

Samsung Galaxy S Relay 4G

Samsung has posted some new images of the upcoming Galaxy S Relay 4G, its latest QWERTY phone. The Relay borrows the Home button layout that Samsung has been pushing on its other Galaxy phones in this upcoming T-Mobile entry, which appears to be aimed at the always-persistent Sidekick fanbase the little pinkish-purple carrier has acquired throughout the years. We don’t have any hard specs on this phone yet, and Samsung has pulled the page containing the info — but TmoNews scraped the page before it was taken down. Supposedly, it will have a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor (same processor as the Galaxy S3 and HTC One X, very nice), a 4-inch, 1280 x 720 pixel screen, 1GB of RAM, and run on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). If true, these are impressive specs and we’d expect the phone to retail for around $200-$300. QWERTY keyboard fans, you may not get a raw deal this year.

Nokia Windows Phone 8 devices

No company needs Windows Phone to succeed like Nokia does — Microsoft included. Nokia has bet the farm on WP and will likely unveil its first Windows Phone 8 devices at a newly scheduled NYC press conference on Sept. 5. We’re not sure how many devices it will show off, but more than one could be in the pipeline. Some rumors point toward a 4.3-inch display, which could have a resolution as high as 1280 x 720 pixels (via WPCentral). A tablet Windows RT tablet announcement is highly likely as well. Unfortunately, we don’t know any more than that. It will likely follow the design style introduced with the Lumia 900.

Motorola Razr HD

Motorola is now owned by Google, but that hasn’t stopped leaked images and specs from hitting the Web at rapid fire pace. As we reported earlier today, Motorola is going to hold a New York City press conference with Verizon on September 5, and all indicators point toward the unveiling of a “Razr HD” phone. The new device looks like an update to the successful Droid Razr and Razr Maxx phones that have been a Verizon staple since Nov. 2011. Rumors point to a higher resolution screen, and possibly slightly larger screen, as well as Android 4.0. Hopefully it will retain the long battery life of the Razr Maxx too, which remains best in class. 

Samsung Windows Phone 8 “Marco” & “Odyssey”

Much like it did with the Focus S and Focus Flash last year, Samsung may release two new Windows Phone devices toward the end of the year. Nicknamed the Omnia “Marco” and the Omnia “Odyssey,” the two phones will run Windows Phone 8 and hit different price points, according to SamMobile. The Odyssey looks to be on the higher end of the spectrum, with a 4.8-inch 720p Super AMOLED screen, 16-32GB internal storage, 8-megapixel rear camera, NFC, and 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Krait processor. It aims to compete with the likes of the fprthcoming Apple iPhone and top Android phones like the Galaxy S3. The Omnia “Marco” will have the same Krait processor, but a smaller, 4-inch Super AMOLED screen, and a 5-megapixel camera. They’ll likely hit U.S. shelves for $100 and $200, if they follow last year’s models. Both phones will have microSD slots and 1.9-megapixel front-facing webcams, as well.

The new iPhone

With each new year comes a new iPhone. There have been a ton of iPhone 5 rumors for the past few months. But unlike last year, these rumors might be true. Andrew has written up a good iPhone 5 rumor roundup, which details what we think we know about the next (sixth) iPhone, which will likely be called “the new iPhone” and may not have a number after it. The new handset will likely have a larger, 4-inch screen, quad-core processor, a thinner body, NFC, and 4G LTE. Oh, and a smaller dock connector, which may end up being the most controversial thing about it. Apple is expected to announce the so-called iPhone 5 on Sept. 12, and it should be released somewhere between late September and mid October. 

Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Samsung’s super-sized “phablet” phone on AT&T has been a hit, and it’s sequel is upon us. The Galaxy Note 2 (if that is its real name) is rumored to have an even-larger, 5.5-inch screen (original was 5.3 inches). With the first Note now available on T-Mobile, we may see a broader launch for the sequel. We expect the Note 2 will integrate as many new features from the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 10.1 as humanly possible. Samsung isn’t pulling any punches: it will unveil the Note 2 (or what we think is the Note 2) at a special event in Berlin on August 29th. The device will likely go on sale within a month or so of the announcement.

Did our best upcoming phones list miss something big? Shoot us a comment below.

Can a hybrid of a fighter and an RPG succeed? Atlus and Arc System Works hope to find the answer in Persona 4 Arena.

As a big fan of Atlus’ Persona series of roleplaying games, I had my doubts about Persona 4 Arena. Developer Arc System Works has proven time and time again that it’s got the chops to create some of the finest 2D fighters in the world, yet with P4A the company was attempting to build a fighter in its own trademarked, hyper-kinectic style that also somehow retains the crucial elements fans loved about the Persona titles, that initially built the canon for the game. It’s hard to imagine two gaming genres as disparate as fighting games and epic Japanese-style roleplaying games, and yet I’m relieved to report that P4A is not just a great mashup of Persona and Arc System Works’ fighting game mechanics, it’s one of my favorite fighters of recent years.

Keep in mind that I did not say “one of the best new fighters of recent years.” We’ll get to why that’s important in just a moment.

If you’re unfamilar with Atlus’ Persona games, a quick primer: In short, the Persona franchise is a modern Japanese-style roleplaying series that tasks players both with battling demons and with surviving the rigors of a Japanese high school. The vast majority of the game’s key characters are high school-aged teens (with all the drama, sarcasm and hormones that implies) with the ability to summon and control the titular Personas. Think of Personas as aspects of one’s personality that manifest as giant, supernatural creatures and grant their users all kinds of useful magical abilities. In Atlus’ Persona RPGs the characters used these Personas to battle shadows throughout the many floors of a giant otherworldly tower that replaced their high school every night.

Notice how complicated that backstory gets? Yeah, and that’s massively condensed. That must have presented a pretty massive hurdle for Arc System Works to overcome in creating a fighter based around this mythology. Traditionally, fighting games have had little to no story — they only needed enough to justify the virtual fisticuffs  — so how would they have to change to incorporate a massive, pre-existing storyline?

The answer, at least according to Persona 4 Arena, is that every aspect of the fighting game has to be infused with backstory. Take the game’s Story Mode for instance: It differs for each fighter, and offers two to three hours of playtime for each, but the majority of one’s time in this mode will be spent reading screens of scrolling text. Occasionally you’ll find yourself drawn into a fight, but with these battles ending in a matter of minutes, the Mode is pretty much entirely dedicated to telling a story. While that may offend those who bought Persona 4 Arena as a fighting game, it’s great news for fans of Atlus’ Persona RPGs. The story written for Persona 4 Arena is on par with its roleplaying forebears, and the characters are somehow fleshed out to an even greater extent than they were in their original games. There’s a good reason why Atlus has officially stated that the events of Persona 4 Arena are canonical in the Persona universe, and that that they fit in so very well. 

Of course, those who were hoping for a simple fighting game could just play through the Arcade Mode, which is a Street Fighter-esque string of battles leading up to a fight with the game’s boss. While this is more traditional, it is also infused with story. Characters chat about the plot between rounds, the announcer offers canon-appropriate commentary and the ending is surprisingly lengthy and involved. The online multiplayer and versus modes are more or less standard fighting game fare, but in the end Persona 4 Arena is the most story-rich fighting game ever created. Whether that pleases you or completely turns you off to the project is a personal choice, but given that Atlus and Arc System Works wanted to a create a fighter that would have crossover appeal to RPG gamers, it makes a lot of sense — and it’s impressive that Atlus and Arc System Works were so successful.

I realize that until now I’ve focused pretty heavily on how much storytelling this game does, but underneath all of that is a very functional, interesting fighting game engine. Though characters feel a bit slower than those found in Arc System Works’ Guilty Gear series, they’re still very agile, and “hyper-kinetic” is a good description for the combat. Remember the Personas I mentioned earlier? They accompany characters into battle and functionally serve to power the more spectacular attacks the game has to offer. Unfortunately, while your Persona is throwing a hurricane at your opponent, it is standing out on the battlefield, vulnerable to attack. If your foe is able to hit your Persona enough it will cause a Persona Break which disables all of your Persona-powered attacks for a short period of time. Since Persona-based attacks are your character’s most powerful attacks, you can see how this might limit a person’s options during battle.

Though the Persona Break system is a very interesting quirk, it represents the combat’s only real break from traditional 2D fighting genre tropes. The controls in Persona 4 Arena are a relatively simple riff on the classic Capcom formula, special moves, super moves and all the other flashy attacks we’ve come to know and love are represented here, and you get about eight fights before squaring off against an over-powered boss. Hopefully I haven’t made this sound like it’s a bad thing, because I think that this level of familiarity makes sure that fans of other fighters can quickly acclimate to the Persona 4 Arena system. Likewise, it allows those gamers who bought this thing purely on the strength of the Persona brand name a chance to pick up the basics of how to punch and kick in relatively quick fashion. While it’s not yet known how well the fighting game community will adopt Persona 4 Arena, they seem pretty keen on it so until further notice you can view the fighting game system in this game as pretty solid and robust.

Conclusion

As I said above though, I wouldn’t quite place Persona 4 Arena as the best fighter of recent years. Instead, it’s the fighter that I’ve enjoyed the most over the past decade. Why? To put it simply, I’m a huge Persona fan. I love these characters and any chance to experience stories of their further adventures, even if they aren’t in RPG format, is something I just can’t argue with. While I would recommend the game to fighting game fans, I would first and foremost recommend it to those who enjoy fighters but also love the Persona RPG games. This is as close to a Persona 5 as we’re going to be getting any time soon, and I’m happy to report that it’s a very viable substitute while we wait.

Score: 9 out of 10

Best Buy is bringing in French turnaround expert Hubert Jolie to revive its ailing business. Can Best Buy avoid being the next Circuit City?

Leading consumer electronics retailer Best Buy has announced that it is hiring Hubert Joly as CEO. Joly most recently headed up restaurant and hotel operator Carlson Co. The Frenchman is expected to take over as Best Buy CEO next month once his visa is secured; in the meantime, Best Buy board member Mike Mikan will continue to serve as interim CEO.

Bringing Joly on board may help the retailer focus on the future rather muddling through the chaos left behind in the wake of former CEO Brain Dunn’s scandalous departure. But public perception is not Best Buy’s only problem: How can Joly — who has no retail experience — hope to prevent the company from becoming another Circuit City?

Who is Hubert Joly?

Herbert Joly comes to Best Buy by way of Carlson Co., which is not exactly a household name, but it’s the parent company behind plenty of them. The Minneapolis-based firm runs more than 900 restaurants (including T.G.I. Friday’s) and more than 1,000 hotels (including Radisson, park Plaza, and Country Inns & Suites) in 150 countries around the world. The Carlson Companies are closely held, but are generally well-regarded by its employees, especially in terms of supporting workplace diversity.

Joly became Carlson’s CEO in 2008; before that he was the head of Carson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), a partnership Carlson formed with Paris-based Wagonlit Travel. CWT is one of the world’s largest business travel management firms. At the helm, Joly headed a turnaround that saw a nearly three-fold increase in sales and strongly improved profit margins.

These credentials may illustrate Joly’s ability to lead a large corporation and instigate financial turnarounds, but experience in travel, hotels, and restaurants doesn’t seem to have any bearing on consumer electronics, technology, or new media. For that, Best Buy is digging back further into Joly’s career: Before CWT, he served briefly as Vivendi Universal’s CIO, and had overseen the integration of Vivendi and Universal’s assets in the United States. Starting back in 1999, Joly played a major role in restructuring Vivendi’s video game business — at the time, that included the development and expansion of its still-active Diablo and World of Warcraft franchises.

Further back, Joly has additional tech cred: From 1996 to 1999 he was a major player in turning around Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in France. EDS was the technology services company founded by former U.S. presidential candidate H. Ross Perot; it offered data processing, personnel management, and services like claims processing for a variety of companies, as well as the U.S. federal government. Hewlett-Packard acquired it back in 2009, and it now forms much of HP’s Enterprise Services division.

Joly is largely viewed as a turnaround-expert for hire: Companies hire him to come in, initiate forceful turnaround plans, and put the company on firmer business ground. Once that’s done, Joly transitions to another company in need of his skills. Joly’s track record is about as good as they come — and there’s no doubt that Best Buy needs some serious help.

Best Buy’s situation

Best Buy is the United State’s leading consumer electronics retailer, with more than 1,400 retail locations, more than $50 billion in business, and more than 160,000 employees. By any measure, Best Buy seems to be a roaring success, clinching its hold on the consumer electronics space while competitors like CompUSA and Circuit City withdrew from the market or closed up altogether.

But it’s not easy being king. In its most recent fiscal year, Best Buy reported a loss of $1.2 billion — that compares with a profit of $1.3 billion the previous year. Numbers like that make investors and partners very nervous, as the company sees in-store sales declining as customers ship to online retailers like Amazon.com that can often offer better prices (and free shipping) on the exact same products. Increasingly, Best Buy’s expensive-to-operate retail stores are functioning as showrooms for consumers, who may go into a Best Buy location to check out new products, but then purchase the products online at a lower price after they leave. The situation can be exasperated by instances of questionable sales tactics, with stories of customers being pressured to purchase things like (highly profitable) extended warranties, or even preying on seniors and other customers who may not have a strong understanding of products into buying things they may not want or need. (It’s certainly not a universal experience, but with social media even a single negative instance can be substantially magnified.)

Some of Best Buy’s injuries are self-inflicted. A good portion of the company’s loss in its most recent fiscal year stemmed from buying out Carphone Warehouse’s share of Best Buy Mobile and writing down Best Buy Europe goodwill: Best Buy might be the leading electronics retailer in the U.S., but its plans to expand into Europe fizzled out, in part due to the worldwide economic downturn. The costly gambit didn’t work out. Similarly, the company’s plans to turn into a digital media giant with services like Napster and CinemaNow failed to resonate with consumers. Best Buy also inked a deal with LightSquared to bring 4G LTE to its Best Buy Connect offerings — that sure worked out well.

Challenges like these are more-or-less part and parcel of being a massive brick-and-mortar business these days. However, Best Buy truly stepped in it with the abrupt resignation of CEO Brian Dunn in April. Best Buy was very clear it had no problems with Dunn’s operational or financial decision-making. Instead, the “mutual” decision that he should depart stemmed from an inappropriate “extremely close” relationship with a 29-year-old female employee. It’s one thing for a corporate leader to announce a round of belt-tightening in a tough business — as Dunn did when he announced the closure of 50 U.S. Best Buy locations. It’s another thing to have a philanderer in the top chair.

Since then, Best Buy has been struggling for direction. Best Buy founder Richard Schulze resigned as chairman of the company in June, in part for helping keep Dunn’s shenanigans a secret. However, Schulze remained a force to be reckoned with, since he still owned more than 20 percent of the company. Schulze has since engaged in an almost guerrilla campaign to make a $10 billion offer to take Best Buy private. Schulze would cut costs, slash prices, and improve customer service — and, perhaps most importantly, streamline corporate governance into a kind of benign dictatorship that would make the company more nimble. In the meantime, Best Buy announced it was laying off some 600 of its Geek Squad employees and 1,800 additional store personnel to cut costs.

In hiring Joly as CEO, Best Buy’s board is essentially telling Schulze to go packing. Best Buy says it offered to take Schulze’s offer seriously and give him time and flexibility to line up financing, but claimed Schulze’s offer contained “insufficient information.” Schulze describes Best Buy’s actions as an “abrupt public termination” of negotiations. However, Schulze still has his 20 percent stake in the company — and Best Buy hasn’t yet made arrangements with him for a standstill period wherein he won’t take his takeover offer directly to shareholders. Schulze could still try to stage a rebellion.

Can Best Buy avoid being the next Circuit City?

Hubert Joly certainly has his work cut out for him: Best Buy’s stock is down 13 percent this year, and the company is facing continuing losses due to strong competition from online retailers. Moreover, by bringing Joly on board, Best Buy is essentially signaling to investors that they won’t see details of a turnaround plan until 2013: It is going to take some time for Joly to come on board, get his feet wet, and formulate a strategy.

On Joly’s side, Best Buy is probably the most-recognized electronics retailing brand in the United States, and the company has had some success transitioning business towards highly profitable products like mobile phones. Best Buy is also working to compete with Amazon directly as an online retailer. After all, Best Buy already has enormous inventory management and customer fulfillment systems. It could conceivably focus on offering a premier consumer electronics online shopping experience that would contrast with Amazon’s catch-all online shopping strategy, which has spilled over into everything from tools to groceries to perhaps igloos.

However, regardless of Joly’s successful track record turning around businesses, investors and industry-watchers would be much happier if Best Buy had settled on a new CEO who actually has significant experience in retailing, rather than coming to Best Buy from restaurants and hospitality. But, if Joly really is the turnaround rockstar Best Buy thinks he is, maybe a lack of retail experience will enable some outside-the-big-box thinking that could re-invigorate Best Buy.

Tokyo Jungle is coming to America, and it's only a month away.

Come September 25, PlayStation 3 owners with access to the PlayStation Network Store will have a chance to experience the rigors of Darwinian evolution firsthand. According to a post published this morning on Sony’s official PlayStation.blog, that’s the day that the previously Japan-exclusive Tokyo Jungle hits the service for the very affordable price of $15.

Why are we so excited about a downloadable game that none of us have any real exposure to, outside of various Japanese screenshots and official trailers? To put it simply, the game has an awesome premise. To wit:

Tokyo Jungle puts you in the shoes (paws?) of over 50 playable animals ranging from Pomeranians to Lions. Playing your animal of choice, unleash your inner beast to hunt your way to the top of Tokyo’s post-apocalyptic food chain.

There are two game modes: in Story Mode, you’ll play as a range of different animals whose lives are intertwined as they struggle to survive in the Tokyo wilderness, while unraveling the mystery of mankind’s disappearance. In Survival Mode, you will hunt, occupy territories, and produce offspring to secure future generations and resist extinction. As you progress, you’ll also obtain survival points to unlock playable animals and purchase costumes to increase your abilities.

Though that sounds like a pretty cutthroat situation, the game also seemingly abounds with that special brand of weirdness exclusive to Japanese game developers. Yeah, the trailer embedded below — Sony’s official Tokyo Jungle trailer from the recent Gamescom conference — seems epic and majestic, that all screeches to a halt the moment the Pomeranian shows up. Sure, one of the tiny pooches does manage to kill a rabbit, but it’s not exactly like these dogs are a match for the elephants and tigers we saw earlier in the clip. 

While we are a bit concerned as to how exactly how well this thing plays, that premise alone is enough to earn our $15. Granted, Tokyo Jungle could turn out to be a quirky, yet terrible game, but in our wildest dreams the thing plays like a Final Fight-style beat ‘em up set in an open world with a story that reads like a cross between The Lion King, Watership Down and The Plague Dogs. Cute animals are neat, but the game’s post-apocalyptic urban setting is so perfect for something dark that it would seem like a missed opportunity if the entirety of Tokyo Jungle is cutesy fluff. Unfortunately we won’t know anything concrete one way or another until the end of September, but we’ll fill you in as soon as we have more information.

After the success of Plants Vs Zombies, a sequel seemed inevitable. PopCap's announcement of said sequel this morning proves as much.

The zombies are coming … again.

This morning, PopCap Games announced that it has begun work on a sequel to its critically beloved blockbuster casual strategy game Plants Vs Zombies. Courtesy the official press release:

The sequel to Plants vs. Zombies is expected to launch by late spring 2013, and will include a bevy of new features, settings, and situations, designed to delight the franchise’s tens of millions of fans around the world. No other details of the highly anticipated new installment in the franchise are available at this time, beyond the following comments from some of the game’s denizens.

So, we’ve got a vague “spring 2013″ release date, promises that the Plants Vs Zombies sequel will expand on its predecessor and not much else. With many developers we’d be concerned that this lack of concrete details indicates delays in the game’s production process, but the firm still has at least half a year to put this thing together, and let’s be honest, when it comes to the company responsible for Peggle, Bejeweled and a number of other games our mothers are unable to delete from their iPhones, we’re willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.

Perhaps realizing that the official announcement was a bit light on useful information, the PopCap PR team opted to fill its remaining space with entertaining, subject-appropriate quotes from some of the biggest stars to emerge from the Plants Vs Zombies franchise. To wit:

“Spring is crullest curlie ungood time, and plantz grow dull roots,” noted an unidentified spokesperson. “So, we are meating you for brainz at yore house. No worry to skedule schedlue plan… we’re freee anytime. We’ll find you.” 

“There was a time we relished a bracing, hearty blend of zombies, in the morning,” said Sonny F. Lower, a representative of the Flora Forever Foundation. “But first, a brisk shower and some strategic pruning are required. Tomorrow is near!”

Now, granted, taken by itself the above chunk of text is baffling gibberish, but it should serve to reassure fans that Plants Vs Zombies 2 — or whatever PopCap eventually ends up titling this thing — will exhibit the same wacky sense of humor as its predecessor. Yes, the tight, well-balanced strategy gameplay of Plants Vs Zombies and its surprisingly large offering of playable content have always been the key selling points for the game, but it wouldn’t really be a Plants Vs Zombies title without the undead scrawling borderline-legible notes to players in an effort to get just a bit closer to their delicious brains, now would it?

Oh, and while we’re on the topic, expect to see Plants Vs Zombies 2 on basically every gaming platform in existence. We have no official word on what platforms PopCap hopes to support, but since it’s nearly impossible to find a modern computing device of any kind that doesn’t offer a Plants Vs Zombies port, we’d be stunned if the company didn’t also attempt to maximize the potential exposure of its new Plants Vs Zombies sequel.

Want to expand the storage capacity on your smartphone or tablet? There’s a fantastic deal going on for a 32GB microSDHC card from Samsung, slashing the price down to a mere $27.99. That’s less than a dollar a gig on a memory card that’s barely the size of a fingernail.

It’s not out of the ordinary to spend about $50 more on a tablet that gives you an extra 8GB to 16GB of extra storage, but now you can spend just $28 and get 32GB of extra space! That’s fantastic for stashing more photos, music, videos and all sorts of other content for your mobile enjoyment. The 32GB capacity is enough for up to 8000 photos, 8 hours of HD video or 560 hours of MP3 music.

This is a Class 10 memory card too, so you know that it should be fast enough to keep up with even your highest of high-def entertainment. It’s been rate for up to 24MB/s read speeds and up to 13MB/s write speeds. Samsung has been the world’s top memory manufacturer for 20 years, so you know you’re getting the good stuff here too. Even if the card fails on you for whatever reason, it comes backed with a five-year warranty. The microSDHC card is waterproof, shockproof and magnet proof to boot.

In building a bigger world for Darksiders 2, Vigil forgot to make a better story.

Darksiders is the coolest game about unemployment ever made. In most games about losing your job, the goal is blowing up the corrupt government that turned you into a violent killing machine. Boring. In Darksiders though, you play as War of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, wrongly accused of ending life on Earth before the Rapture was supposed to kick off. Not boring. Your goal is revenge on the people who cost you your job. War’s simple to understand so it’s easy to take up his cause. His skills are specified! How’s he supposed to find work now? Riding through the ruins of reality, kicking angel and demon ass alike until someone pays: Now that’s motivation. It just makes sense that Darksiders II should be cooler, right?

This time you’re playing as Death. Guy has even more reason to be pissed about jumping the Rapture gun. No more humanity means no more need for a Reaper so he’s bound to be angry and powerfully motivated. The sequel is also physically bigger than its predecessor. War was confined to Earth, but Death jumps between many worlds. The land of the dead, the forested Forgelands where God had people making mountains—Death gets around. There are also more tools to play with. He can’t ride ten feet on his green fire-spewing pale horse without stumbling on a pile of new armor and scythes.

It isn’t cooler though. It’s bigger, it feels better to play, but not much is at stake in Darksiders II and as one drab dungeon gives way to another, the game reveals itself to be pretty, well made, and empty.

The first problem is Death himself. Decaying WWE wrestler looks and cheesy mask aside, Death is lithe and a joy to steer around. Jumping up platforms, running across walls, and slinging around twin scythes is lusciously kinetic. Even swimming, hard to pull off in action games, feels effortless. How you beef him up through experience depends on taste. There are two evolving paths for abilities, one based around physical moves and another around undead-summoning spells. Even as you load up on new skills and gear, Death feels easy to use throughout and that’s no bad thing. Personality, however, isn’t his strong suit.

With the exception of the occasional wry quip, Death is a personality-less cypher. Darksiders II is inappropriately named—It’s not a sequel but a series of parallel events wherein Death is working to clear War’s name. For people who’ve played the original, there’s no tension; we already know War is just fine. For neophytes though, Death doesn’t come of as driven. He wants to help his brother, but we never hear why or see any passion from him. War went out looking for the people that wronged him, but Death is usually just chasing Maguffins for characters he meets along the way. Hints that he’s haunted by his role aren’t explored in detail. Death’s history is the subject of a few thin monologues. He’s a reactor, not a catalyst, impotent rather than authoritative.

Darksiders II’s worlds mirror Death in most ways—They’re architecturally sound but soulless. Developer Vigil said that it abandoned Earth as a setting because it wanted to unshackle its creativity. Instead of one dense world that’s engagingly twisted and familiar, Vigil made four worlds that feel like generic fantasy templates. Does every single wall in the land of the dead need five skulls on it? The dungeons Death saunters between are full of brain-massaging puzzles, but lack character. Figuring out how to trigger a switch with a well-thrown bomb is gratifying in the short term, but without a coherent sense of history or place, it’s no more revelatory than assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

Vigil might have been better off making Darksiders II its own game rather than a sequel. They’re infrequent but the game does have moments that hint at a world full of characters worth exploring. Near the beginning of the game, you stumble on an old golem made out of rocks and plants. Who his master was, why he had to wait in this spot; his background is lost because he’s been there so long, but he does know that he’s hungry. His diet consists of rare glowing rocks. This is just set up for having you gather some of the game’s hundreds of optional doodads, but the real reward is getting to know the countryside Death’s exploring a little more. Darksiders II doesn’t expand on these rare opportunities. None of these quests add to the universe established in the first game, and Death doesn’t change because of them.

Conclusion

Corruption, the tainted remains of another of Death’s brothers, is a fitting villain for the game. He’s an all-consuming void eating away at the worlds Death visits on his aimless journey. Darksiders II is bigger, and in many superficial ways better, than Darksiders, but it doesn’t do the same job as well. War’s adventure was about something, silly as it was. Death’s adventure is just the barest excuse to run and jump on stuff while swinging a scythe. For some that might be enough, but like the difference between a job and a career, Darksiders II could have been far more fulfilling.

Score: 6.5 out of 10

Fresh off series cameos in Kingdom Hearts 3D, Square-Enix puts up a teaser website hinting at a new The World Ends With You.

The World Ends With You might be getting a sequel based on a new teaser site from Square-Enix.

Square-Enix is not Squaresoft. Square-Enix is the modern company encompassing Final Fantasy creator Squaresoft, Dragon Quest creator Enix, and Tomb Raider creator Eidos. It’s known for pumping out games as sticky sweet and pop-star-ready as Final Fantasy XIII. Squaresoft was an experimental role-playing game studio that dabbled in melancholy epics like Vagrant Story and weird genre experiments like Einhander.

Every now and then though, the Squaresoft of old will poke its head about ground and lay down the sort of weird, heartfelt game that used to be its stock in trade. The Jupiter and Square collaboration The World Ends With You for Nintendo DS was one of those games. A bunch of spiky-haired teens are trapped in a city where they fight monsters with friendship and collectable buttons. It was great.

Even as series creator Tetsuya Nomura has said he wanted to get back to it, there’s been little hope for a sequel since TWEWY hit the states in 2008. When the characters from that game popped up in Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, it seemed like Square was at least interested in re-releasing the game.

The newly opened teaser site for something labeled “Subaseka,” definitely suggests something The World Ends With You related is coming. The countdown timer looks identical to those that appeared on characters’ arms in the original. The fine print also labels it as a project between Nomura and Gen Kobayashi, his collaborator on TWEWY’s character design.

There are 6 days to go. Fingers crossed.

A leaked survey suggests Dragon Age 3 will be player tested and player approved to avoid the backlash that haunted Dragon Age 2.

Dragon Age 2 learned the hard way that no one likes a Jack-of-all-trades who’s a master of none. BioWare’s first medieval fantasy outing pitting witches and warriors against the Darkspawn was a little too hardcore for the masses, so it streamlined the sequel into a dull blob of a game. Less world, less strategy, and more action-style play was a winning formula when jumping from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2, but in the case of Dragon Age 2, trying to cater to the biggest audience possible made the game pretty dull.

Rather than guess what people want in Dragon Age 3, EA and BioWare are asking directly through surveys. Last week posters in the BioWare Social forum (via NeoGAF) detailed information and questions from a survey from Dragon Age’s creators shedding light on what the next entry will be like.

A few potential titles for Dragon Age 3 according to the survey: Dragon Age 3: Apocrypha, The Breach, Inquisition, Inquisitor, and Exarch. Sounds like there will be a lot of questions that need asking! The plot summary confirms that you will play as the possibly titular inquisitor, looking to close a demon-spewing portal and quell civil war in your home country. Up to 10 companions will join your party this time out, with battle groups including as many as 4 support characters, doubling the usual BioWare party size.

Other details suggested by the survey questions read like a BioWare checklist, with “drama and suspense” and “special finishing moves” highlighted. Any old school fans hoping for a full return to Dragon Age: Origins’ single-player focus, tough cookies—Online co-operative multiplayer in the vein of Mass Effect 3 is also a likely inclusion.

Posters who took the survey also leaked character concept art that looks similar to Matt Rhodes.

We’ve reached out to EA for comment but as of this writing we haven’t received so much as a “EA doesn’t comment on rumors and speculation.”

Focus testing is a useful tool. Gearbox’s Borderlands was exhaustively focus tested before it was released, resulting in the game’s shift to a cartoony art style and a story that was more funny than contemporary marketing “grim and gritty.” Fans were dissatisfied with Dragon Age 2, so it’s probably smart to ask them what they do want as an alternative. Still it’s hard to have faith in a project that isn’t born of genuine enthusiasm on the part of the developer. Dragon Age: Origins was a passion project for BioWare. It should stay that way.

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is off to a strong start, but does it have the same evergreen sales power of its DS predecessor?

New Super Mario Bros. 2 is all about the fat cash money. Mario Mario and Luigi Mario are sick of the steady pay of plumbing and they’ve taken G. Gordon Liddy’s advice to heart, pouring all their time and energy into acquiring monstrous piles of gold. These mustachioed, raccoon-tail wearing freaks are so obsessed with coins in their latest adventure that they literally spout coins out of their heads.

The money obsession isn’t just woven into the game’s platforming fabric. Cash fueled its creation. New Super Mario Bros. for DS and New Super Mario Bros. Wii have been two of Nintendo’s strongest sellers in the past 6 years. NSMB alone has sold nearly 30 million copies. That’s why Nintendo started pulling developers from non-Mario studios to make the new game while the core Mario team EAD worked on New Super Mario Bros. U: To make new Mario games faster.

Has it worked? Is New Super Mario Bros. 2 raking in the dough in Scrooge McDuck quantities? It’s only been available in the US for 24 hours, so we’ll look to the rest of the world. Survey says: Yes.

MCV reported on Monday that the 3DS sequel did brisk business in its first week on sale in the UK. Though it didn’t share precise sales data, UKIE GfK Chart-Track said that New Super Mario Bros. 2 sold more than 29 percent better in its first week than New Super Mario Bros. did. Bully for Nintendo.

Strong UK sales doesn’t guarantee the game will go on to be one of Nintendo’s biggest earners though. The original New Super Mario Bros. sold just 450,000 copies in its first year, but ballooned to 30 million over half a decade because of the Nintendo DS hardware’s popularity. Nintendo kept selling DSs, so people kept buying NSMB. The Nintendo 3DS hardware meanwhile, while healthy, isn’t guaranteed to be as popular as the DS was. In fact, it’s almost impossible seeing as the DS is the second best-selling gaming machine ever made.

Retail performance is only half the story though. New Super Mario Bros. 2 is also the first big Nintendo game to be released as a digital download at launch, and the Big N isn’t spilling its guts on digital sales just yet. President Satoru Iwata did reveal to The Wall Street Journal that 5 percent of NSMB 2’s initial sales in Japan were digital, but again, initial sales aren’t indicative of ultimate success. There’s no golden fire flower for Nintendo to just turn things into money. It has to rely on fickle, everyday people just like every other business to make money.

An alleged MIT employee claims Bethesda's been scouting the school and Boston for Fallout 4.

Bethesda is going to make Fallout 4. It will do this because Bethesda and its owner, publishing umbrella ZeniMax, are businesses and they make creative works likely to make money. People liked Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. A lot. Yeah, Bethesda will probably sit down and build another irradiated wasteland for people to wander and mess about in. That’s not in question: It’s the locale that will be up in the air. The Elder Scrolls studio let you drift about Las Vegas and the District of Columbia in the past. Next time, it’ll let you act out all your post-apocalyptic Good Will Hunting fan fiction and fight a mutated Bill Belichick. Fallout 4 is headed to Boston.

So says Reddit user “Fallout4boston.” This intrepid tipster hit the aggregator community over the weekend claiming to be an MIT employee. That educational institution will figure prominently in the next Fallout game as Bethesda has reportedly paid a number of scouting visits to the campus lately.

The Boston area is called “The Commonwealth” in Fallout lore, an area as nasty and unforgiving as Pittsburgh remnants “The Pit,” but also home to the “Institute” and the “Railroad.” The Institute, built from the remnants of MIT, is an organization producing technologically advanced weapons and human-like androids that pop up in Fallout 3’s quests. The Railroad is the Institute’s sworn enemies, a group trying to free the androids. Both factions are classic Fallout, cleaver references to familiar 20^th century trappings, slightly warped. Example: The Railroad refers to the Tech Model Railroad Club, an unofficial group formed at MIT in the ‘40s remembered as the first hacker collective.

A perfect set up for a new Fallout adventure. That technological conflict is very different from past entries in the series, and the harsh coastal climate of Boston should make for a familiar but different setting. Not to mention all the hilarious accents wandering muties are bound to have!

All this is speculation though. The only official anything out there for Fallout 4 is the ZeniMax-owned URL Fallout4.com, but its owned that domain since 2004, back when Bethesda’s ownership of the series was hotly contested by Interplay.

That said, Fallout 4 will probably be a reality well before series albatross, the Fallout MMO. ZeniMax Online is hard at work on The Elder Scrolls Online. 

The Motorola’s September 5th event has long been believed to be focused on the rumored Droid Razr HD. While we didn’t have any kind of official confirmation to that end, a big piece of the puzzle has now been revealed. Several videos have leaked to YouTube by user revowii that walk through the XT926- aka, Droid Razr HD. The videos show off a customized version of Android 4.0 with on-screen navigation, though the videos obviously don’t tell us anything specific about the specs in the new Razr HD.

According to the rumors, this upcoming phone will feature a Snapdragon S4, 720P screen, LTE, and NFC. Until the official word hits, check out the videos below to get a better look at the new Droid Razr HD.