Oculus Rift developer kits are already making their way into the wild as some 40 kits are expected to ship by the end of this month but it’s what one big publisher may be planning that’s capturing headlines today. According to Frank Vitz, head of the Frostbite creative team at DICE, he is one of the guys on the team that is really eager to see how the Oculus Rift works with Frostbite.

It all started when an MTBS3D (Meant to be Seen) forum member discovered an intern job posting by EA’s DICE looking for someone to focus on next generation VR technology. The posting specifically mentioned investigating and implementing support for the Oculus Rift SDK in the Frostbite Engine.

MTBS3D president Neil Schneider got in touch with Vitz via e-mail as he suspected he might have something to do with the job posting. Sure enough, he was dead on the money as the executive fessed up to the post in a reply. Vitz gave Schneider permission to post the exchange on his site which details some interesting information about the VR headset and what DICE would like to do with it.

Vitz said he has one of the first Rift dev kits coming his way later this month and that he is aware of at least four kits on order in the internal community. He said there are multiple titles in the works that would be awesome with the Rift but noted that it would ultimately be up to each game team to ensure their project works in stereoscopic 3D and with the Rift.

SimCity, one of the most anticipated releases of the year, launched in the US early this morning but that doesn’t mean everyone that purchased the game got to play it right away. The title, which requires EA’s Origin PC download client to operate even in single player mode, was seemingly met with much higher demand than anticipated, causing Origin’s servers to crumple under the pressure.

Origin has published nearly a dozen tweets on their official Twitter account addressing various issues. It all started just around midnight when the team said they were experiencing delays due to heavy traffic. Moments later we were told that they were aware of an issue affecting customers trying to download the Digital Deluxe edition of SimCity.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that customers were not allowed to pre-load the 10GB title. What’s worse, however, is that EA says some players attempting to redeem a code may not actually have the code applied to their account. The remedy, EA said, is to wait to redeem codes until further word has been handed down.

The latest news from Origin’s Twitter account points out that high demand for the game is causing delays for a small percentage of users. The team is also making changes to prevent further issues and is confident that Origin will be stable for international launches later this week.

You’d think at this point that publishers would want to avoid the negative press that’s associated with virtually every high-profile game launch that requires an online connection. Instead, gamers are forced to deal with the situation time and time again as companies take a reactive approach instead of being proactive.

The numbers from Steam's February hardware and software survey have been published and the results show an interesting development -- Linux platforms now accounts for about 2.8 percent of Steam's users. That may not sound like much, but to put some perspective on that figure, Mac OS users total about 3.07 percent of Steam's gaming population.

Note that I'm also lumping "Others" (0.82 percent) into the total number of Linux client installs. This is because the category practically didn't exist until Steam's Linux beta arrived in October.

Unlike Mac OS though, where Steam has had its chance to propagate since May 2010, Steam for Linux has only been publicly available since October 2012 as a limited public beta. It wasn't even until February that a Linux-friendly Steam client was officially launched, so this could be interpreted as encouraging news for the future of Linux gaming. 

Ubuntu accounts for more than half of Linux-based client installs. The only other Linux distro listed by name is Mint, which accounts for roughly six percent of Linux installs.

Perhaps the rising proliferation of Linux users on Steam will help promote the development of more AAA titles for Linux. It probably wouldn't be a bad market for developers either, as Linux gamers seem more willing to part with their money than Windows or Mac users. There are currently 131 games on Steam that are compatible with Linux, but the overwhelming majority of those are indie games.

Looking beyond just Linux though, Valve's stats show 1080p being used on nearly one-third of all systems. This makes 1080p the single most popular resolution while higher resolutions, like WQHD, only accounts for about 4.5 percent.

Steam's gaming community appears to value up-to-dateness with DX11-capable graphics cards appearing in about 58 percent of systems. Nvidia is the most popular choice with a 52.39 percent share of gamers, while ATI (AMD) and Intel round out the bottom half with 33.92 and 13.1 percent, respectively. 

Intel is by far the favored platform with a whopping 73 percent of gamers running systems powered by an Intel chip. Meanwhile, dual-core CPUs prove very slightly more popular than quad-cores while 40 percent of gamers have 6GB of RAM (or more) installed.

Virgin Mobile customers will not be too pleased to learn that their network is restricting mobile broadband download speeds to just 2Mbps.

After some users took to support forums to complain about a perceived slowing of 3G services, a company representative confirmed that a speed cap had been implemented late last month.

The representative said that the deliberate slowdown was to ensure there was enough of the company's bandwidth to ensure all users could make good use of the service.

While download speeds are now capped at 2Mbps, upload speeds are also restricted to 0.5Mbps.

Good service for all?

The post on the support site read: "I've received confirmation that we're trialing a speed cap which has been in place since mid-Feb and is applicable to Contract and PAYG customers, but excludes Mobile Broadband.

"The current cap is 2Mb/s download, 0.5Mb/s upload. We are doing this to ensure we can offer a good level of service to all customers."

Users have naturally responded angrily to the admission, registering their displeasure on the support forums, although a couple of users said a quick call resulted in them being exempted from the trial.

Others have complained to the Advertising Standards Agency, claiming that 'truly unlimited' data contracts must equate to more than just volume, but also forbid speed throttling too.

Between crowd-funded consoles, gamepads and handhelds it would appear that Android has a bright future in gaming. Today, yet another company is throwing its hat in the ring. Led by Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang, Green Throttle aims to turn any Android device into a gaming platform by pairing it with a dual-stick gamepad and what they call a multitiered gaming system housed on an Android app.

For now the free Green Throttle Arena app is available to Kindle Fire HD owners only, but it will be rolling out to the Google Play Store by the end of the month to support other Android tablets and smartphones, starting with the Samsung Galaxy S3. The app highlights compatible games -- there’s only a handful of them but more will be added on a weekly basis -- and enables users to easily pair controllers with their device.

The Atlas controller makes up the other half of Green Throttle’s solution. It bears a resemblance to the Xbox 360 controller and connects via Bluetooth to the Kindle Fire HD, which itself pipes out video and audio from the Arena app to an HDTV via a micro HDMI cable. Fire everything up and you can start gaming on your living room TV.

But the real magic is the ability to support local multiplayer on an Android device. As Huang explains, tablets and smartphones presume a single-user experience, but once you hook them up to TV it becomes a shared experience. So while Android doesn't natively support pairing multiple controllers to your phone or tablet at a time, a special protocol written into Arena lets players connect and use up to four controllers.

Green Throttle's Arena app sorts out Bluetooth data from each device and separates them into four definable players. It's a neat trick, although unfortunately this level of integration also means that the Atlas controller will only work on Green Throttle enabled games -- and vice versa.

A single Atlas controller costs $39.95 on Green Throttle's site, and the two player bundle including a micro HDMI to HDMI cable and a micro USB charger, will set you back $89.99.

As the hardware inside phones and tablets keeps getting better, Green Throttle seems to be betting on a future where dedicated console hardware becomes redundant -- with gaming duties taken care of by hundreds smartphone and tablet devices that iterate on a yearly basis instead. Whether that vision realizes or not will depend on their ability to get developers interested in the platform. Either way it looks to be an interesting year for independent game developers and gamers in general with projects like Ouya, GameStick, Shield and others.

Video source: VentureBeat

INQ, the brand behind the now-retired-but-super-connected Cloud Touch, has launched So.Ho as a new way of consuming social network updates.

Sitting on the homescreen of Android phones (running Ice Cream Sandwich or above) the free app allows you to look at your Twitter or Facebook feed in simple, block-based format rather than diving into the apps themselves.

This does strip away some key functionality, like seeing responses or searching hashtags, so users will have to decide whether avoiding diving into the apps for the ease of update viewing is worth it.

This is hardly a new concept; however the difference here is the app's ability to dive into links posted by friends or those you follow and pull richer content out – meaning Tweets will auto-populate with pictures and more information, rather than just a meaningless URL.

Ken Johnstone, CEO and founder of INQ Mobile, told TechRadar that the company was looking to bring more social networks into the fold – he said the company was focusing on the more visual-based services, meaning the likes of Pinterest or Instagram are being considered (among others).

Breaking old ground

Such feed apps aren't new for the phone, with the likes of Sony Ericsson's TimeScape feed combining users social network updates in one stream. However, these quickly become noisy and more of a hassle to view for users, meaning they were dispensed with in favour of dedicated apps.

Johnstone said INQ was aware of this flaw, which is why the two feeds (Facebook and Twitter) are kept separate within the app, but the company was intent on improving the 'discovery' element of So.Ho, giving it powers to discern the updates it thinks you'll be most interested in.

This would build on work from the firm's recent Material app, which pulls down content it thinks you'll be most interested in based on who you follow on Twitter and the links your Facebook friends post. This could also be included in So.Ho in the future to add functionality, Johnstone confirmed.

These content aggregators are growing in power it seems – taking the idea of the Live Tile from Windows Phone, which dispenses constant updates from disparate apps, and then moving onto elements like the HTC One's Blinkfeed, which fuses RSS feeds, pictures and social networks to give truly 'snackworthy' content for those that like to glance at the mobile phone and go.

Whether this smaller manufacturer can make inroads into a market that's also dominated by the likes of Flipboard, which is pre-installed on a number of Android devices, remains to be seen – but the smooth and clean interface at least promises to make digesting your social network feeds a little simpler.

The BBC is finally bringing iPlayer to Windows Phone 7.5 and 8, though not quite in the form we were hoping for.

The new service, which will arrive "in the next few months", is a Live Tile shortcut that takes users to the service via the BBC Media Player.

A spokesman for the BBC told TechRadar: "It's not a native app, so we're being clear that it will be a shortcut available on the Windows Phone Store. It will link to the mobile site which you currently can't access via Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8 via the BBC Media Player."

We all stream for iStream

Over 650 devices can currently access BBC's instant streaming service and this new deal will mean that Windows Phone users can finally join this not-so-exclusive club which includes Blackberry, Android and iOS users.

It's a step in the right direction for Microsoft, but there's a way to go if it wants to play catchup, with the iPhone app already offering offline downloads for iPlayer.

As for Windows 8 users, the desktop iPlayer can still only be downloaded and used in desktop mode, which is better than nothing.

Yes, it turns out that even Apple had a few dud names in the bag before settling on the iPhone.

Apple's former head of advertising, Ken Segall, told an audience at the University of Arizona's Department of Marketing that they wrestled with several naff ideas.

Mobi, TriPod, TelePod and, strangely, iPad, were all up for consideration for Apple's first phone - we can see why they didn't make the cut.

The fastest, most powerful Mobi yet

"Dude, check out the new TelePod," doesn't quite have the same ring to it, even if it does combine the device's key elements – telephone and iPod.

The TriPod, on the other hand, was a nifty way of communicating the added internet capabilities, though also sounds like we'd be emailing on some sort of, well, tripod.

The fact Apple pondered on iPad is particularly interesting, especially as the Cupertino company was working on what became the real iPad before their flagship phone came along.

Is there an alternative universe where we're tapping away on our TriPad Minis right now? It doesn't bear thinking about.

The surprisingly decent camera experience featured in the HTC One could well make it to other, less powerful HTC devices in the future.

The Taiwanese firm engineered a new form of camera technology for its latest flagship venture which saw the HTC One equipped with an Ultrapixel sensor equivalent to a 4MP camera, but with the ability to match the likes of the iPhone 5, Sony Xperia Z and Nokia Lumia 920 in terms of image quality.

Now Phil Roberson, Head of HTC UK and Ireland has confirmed that the Ultrapixel technology could feature in other devices which don't boast quad-core processors.

Potential is there

Roberson told Omio: "The ability to take HD video and high-res images at the same time is powered by the quad-core on the device.

"There will be certain technical challenges, but the tech does support the other elements of it which we can take to other parts of the portfolio."

Speaking more specifically on bringing the Ultrapixel technology to low-end handsets Roberson said: "There is definitely the potential to take it into those spaces."

BlinkFeed incoming

While current handsets won't be able to benefit from the Ultrapixel camera tech, those in line for an upgrade to Android Jelly Bean 4.2 and Sense 5.0 will be able to enjoy the firm's new BlinkFeed service.

BlinkFeed serves up bite size portions of news from pre-selected categories which you can easily digest from the homescreen and while we're not completely sold on the idea it could grow into something useful after more development and greater customisation options.

Current handsets which are in the running to receive Sense 5.0 are the HTC One X, HTC One X+, HTC One S and HTC Butterfly.

It's no secret that the HTC One release date is set for March 15, but one online retailer in the UK reckons it could be getting it a day early.

Expansys told TechRadar, "The HTC One is now expected in stock on Thursday 14 March."

We contacted the retailer and a spokesperson clarified: "We are hoping for stock to be in customers hands for March 14 if they have pre-ordered. It all depends on the stock coming in and so far we can only say 'expected on 14th'."

Not set in stone

Release dates from Expansys haven't always been on the money, so anyone who has pre-ordered shouldn't automatically assume they'll be among the first to have the HTC One in hand.

We were impressed with the One when we saw it at its official launch event last month with our Phones and Tablets Editor, Gareth Beavis, saying: "This is a phone that wows the second it hits the hand, it has a great screen, strong internal storage of up to 64GB and a superfast processor."

However, the Taiwanese firm will be going to market at the same time its close Korean rival announces the Samsung Galaxy S4 in New York, which could well overshadow the HTC One.