Amazon has more-or-less confirmed that a new Kindle Fire will be announced next week.

If there was any question about what’s in store for Amazon’s September 6 event, there isn’t anymore: The online retail giant has pulled the Kindle Fire from its website, saying that the device is “sold out.” Not only that, but Amazon went so far as to publish a press release about it. Can you say “hint, hint” any louder, Amazon?

“We’re grateful to the millions of customers who have made Kindle Fire the most successful product launch in the history of Amazon,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com founder and CEO, in a statement. “This has been a big year for digital products on Amazon — all of the top 10 sellers on Amazon.com since Kindle Fire launched just less than a year ago are digital products. Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead — we will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem.”

That’s right, Amazon has “an exciting roadmap ahead,” which includes “the best hardware, the best prices,” and “the best cross-platform interoperability.” All of that is code for: New Kindle Fire coming next week! And if it’s not, well, then Amazon sucks at writing press releases.

Amazon boasts that the 7-inch Kindle Fire “is the #1 best-selling product” on Amazon.com, and has earned more than “10,000 5-star ratings” since its launch on November 15, 2011. While all that is surely true, it does not take into consideration the recent launch of Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, which costs the same ($200), and is easily a better device.

While this announcement essentially confirms that a new Kindle Fire is on its way, rumors suggest that Amazon has more than one device up its sleeve, including a larger Kindle Fire tablet that measures 10-inches (about the same size as the iPad), as well as a smartphone. On those counts, we’ll just have to wait until next Thursday to find out.

We speak with developer Alex Knight about how Activision is attempting to bring a unique type of humor to gaming in the Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse.

Activision and developer Heavy Iron Studios are taking funny business very seriously with its new Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse game, based on the hit Fox TV show. The game makers are working directly with writers from the show’s production company, Fuzzy Door, as well as creator Seth McFarlane and the rest of the voice cast. A first look at the third-person action game revealed just how funny – in a politically incorrect style, of course – gaming can be.

Fans of the show will remember the innovative Season 8 episode that this game spins off from, in which Stewie builds a multidimensional portal device that allowed him and Brian to go into parallel universes. Along the way the unlikely duo stumble through a Flintstones-like world, a slightly racist Disney universe, and even a Robot Chicken-verse.

“In Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse, players are going to be jumping into the multiverse to try and take down Bertram, who has found out a way to create his own multiverse device and is jumping into all these parallel universes, amassing his own armies to kill Stewie,” said Alex Knight, associate producer on the game at Activision. “Stewie and Brian find this out and are not going to have any of it, so they’re jumping in to all of our alternate universes to take down Bertram and his armies.”

For those not familiar with the show’s past, Bertram is Stewie’s half-brother and rival. This story line allows the game developers to explore episodes from throughout the show’s history and will feature several series familiars as Stewie and Brian jump through episodic missions in parallel universes.

Two such episodes were highlighted in the Gamescom 2012 demo. The first game level shown, “Handicappable,” was inspired by the Season 5 episode, “No Meals on Wheels.”

“That’s a universe where the handicapped people and cripples have been having a little too much special treatment, so they’ve kicked out all the two-legged walking people, put them into isolation, and rule that entire universe now,” said Knight.

As in this level and all the others, gamers can play as either Stewie or Brian. Stewie utilizes his science fiction weapons, which includes some sophisticated laser pistols. He also chugs orange soda to give himself a sugar rush for extra abilities. Brian, on the other hand, utilizes more traditional weapons. He has access to machines guns and pistols, and his melee weapon is a broken whiskey bottle.

“As fans are going to recognize from the TV episode, Joe Swanson formed up a large Transformer-like character that was comprised of people in wheelchairs called Crippletron,” said Knight. “It looks fantastic. It’s one of our bosses, and it’s just a blast to go after him.”

Outside of the aforementioned towering handicapped Transformer, enemies in this level speed to the scene in handicapped vans, only to wait for the ramp to be slowly lowered before they can wheel after Brian and Stewie. The show’s humor is spread throughout every inch of the level, including posters in the hospital from Dr. Hartman. Lady Liberty now sits in a bronze wheelchair with her mouth open and head to the side. Nothing is off-limits, just like in the show, which Fox canceled twice before it catapulted to the top of the ratings.

The other game level shown is set in the Amish universe, which is taken from the “Amish Guy” episode, the seventh episode of the 10th season. The serene countryside setting is splattered with blood as Brian and Stewie attempt to kill all the Amish people before they kill them. But there’s a practical reason for this bloodshed.“The great thing about this brand is that if Family Guy pushes the boundaries, we get to push the boundaries,” said Knight. “That’s the great thing about having the two writers from the show crafting our content; it’s as far as Family Guy goes, and it’s mimicked right in our game.”

“Amish people have all things needing wood, so Bertram has convinced them to go after Stewie and Brian in exchange for special wood pills,” explained Knight. “That’s something that not everybody knows about, but the Amish really have all things wood. They want to create everything based out of wood, so that’s a real incentive for them to go after Stewie and Brian.”

The game is filled with challenge modes. One of these modes in the Amish world challenges players to kill all the Amish people, while refraining from hitting any tourists. Knight said the fiction behind that is the Amish are sick of having tourists around them. They just want to live their lives, so Brian and Stewie are a threat.

While there’s plenty of humor from the show’s long lineage, the new game isn’t going to make fun of video games, per se. In fact, people interested in that take can play the free Family Guy Online game, which does reference games — and gamers — directly. Knight does believe gamers will find “a lot of odes to video game references, just not necessarily to that extent that one might think.”

These two levels, which were shown in small segments, are just part of the overall scope of the fall release.

“It’s a huge game,” said Knight. “Right now it’s probably eight hours just in the story alone. Then you’re going to have a lot of challenge missions, as well as four-player and co-op local play that will introduce some very interesting death matches. And there are game modes that we haven’t announced yet that I think fans are really going to love.”

Basically, if you like Family Guy, and judging from the ratings there still are a lot of fans out there, this game will serve up the same type of humor, only with an interactive twist. And if you just can’t wait to get your game on, Family Guy Online is a fun, free alternative available now.

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We go hands on with Toshiba's new Satellite U925t, one of the cooler new Windows 8 tablet and laptop hybrids we've seen.

The best thing about Windows 8 is that everyone is finally rethinking the laptop. For decades, we’ve stuck with clamshell devices that all look roughly the same, but now things are getting a little crazy. Toshiba’s not the first company you think of when someone talks about innovative design, but lately, the manufacturer has been upping its game and delivering some unique products. Hot off the heels of its ultra widescreen laptop, Toshiba has revealed the Satellite U925t, a horribly named, but very cool new tablety, laptopy convertible PC running Windows 8.

There are other companies trying out crazy new designs for Windows 8, which is itself a crazy rethinking of Windows built around touch. Some designs, like the one shown by Samsung yesterday, are quite similar to the U925t, but Toshiba new tablet is less about the gimmick of sliding out a keyboard and more about how much of a benefit it provides. It probably won’t be as thin as some of its competitors, but Toshiba appears to have put build quality first. Holding the U925t in tablet mode is nice. It’s heavier and thicker than an iPad (3.2lbs), but with a 12.5-inch 720p screen, 128GB solid state drive, and new Intel Core i5 processor, it’s in a different league when it comes to power. This is a full PC.

Much like a smartphone QWERTY keyboard, the keyboard and touchpad on the U925t slides out. Once it’s fully extended, you can bend the screen up as far as you want, up to a full 90 degree angle. Unlike many competing laptabs, Toshiba’s appears to have solid hinges and a good sturdy feel to it. You can easily adjust it to any angle you want and it stays in place. There’s nothing worse than spending a grand on a computer only to have the screen flop around. The screen is also made of Gorilla Glass, so you don’t have to worry about breaking it.

The hinged screen also has the benefit of being a lot closer to you than a traditional laptop, making the touchscreen more natural to use, and with Windows 8, the only fun way to use it is by touching it.

Common smartphone features like a 3-megapixel rear camera, front camera, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth, an ambient light sensor, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer are also present, which should make the U925t a good tablet as well. The keyboard is backlit as well, so typing in the dark won’t be a problem.

Toshiba told me that the Satellite U925t will be available on October 26 when Windows 8 ships, but a price hasn’t been finalized. It will likely retail for a little more than $1,000 — maybe around $1200 or so. 

Sony releases its best HD remake collection yet, collecting all three PS2 era games onto one disc for the Ratchet & Clank Collection.

Sony has been cleaning up lately with repeated dives into its back-catalog for PlayStation 3 remakes and collections. The latest from the publisher is both, amounting to a collection of HD remakes from the PlayStation 2 era of Insomniac Games’ Ratchet & Clank series. The Ratchet & Clank Collection gathers together Ratchet & Clank (2002), Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (2003), and Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal (2004) onto a single disc, complete with a shiny new 1080p makeover as well as support for 720p stereoscopic 3D.

There’s no question that this is a sharp-looking collection. In truth, it’s really one of the prettiest of the recent run on HD remakes that we’ve seen yet, on any platform. The Ratchet games lend themselves very well to this sort of visual makeover, and the new coat of paint makes everything really pop on a typical, modern-day HDTV. The overall improvement across the three games is in fact so dramatic that the pre-rendered cutscenes suffer by comparison. Not only are they presented in their original 4:3 aspect ratio — compared to each game’s new 16:9 widescreen view — but they look positively ancient next to the newly HD gameplay.

Beyond the visual upgrades, there’s really nothing new to speak of. Each of the three games are content-complete, with even the multiplayer mode from Up Your Arsenal revived, allowing up to eight players to duke it out on the PlayStation Network. There are Trophies for each of the three titles, of course, but the HD remakes are otherwise identical to their decade-old predecessors.

What’s amazing is how well these games have aged. As fun as it was to play 2011′s Team Ico collection – Ico and Shadow of the Colossus — both of those games ultimately felt rather clunky by today’s standards. That’s not so with the three Ratchet games. There’s a very detectable technical improvement as you move from Ratchet & Clank to Going Commando to Up Your Arsenal, but all three are nearly as smooth to play overall as the current-gen Ratchet games are. Even the visuals aren’t all that different; the current-gen titles feature improved facial expressions and more dazzling special effects, but the general feel carries across the generations very well.

There are a few funny quirks to the Ratchet & Clank Collection, some unique to this PS3 disc and some merely holdovers from an earlier era in gaming. All three of the games default to inverted camera controls on the right analog stick. You can change that easily enough in the menus, though in an amusing twist, the first two games actually have the nerve to refer to inverted as “normal.” Insomniac got things straight for Up Your Arsenal; you still default to inverted controls, but at least the menus refer to them as such.

The only real flaw I could find with the collection relates to the accessibility of each game. Once you’ve fired up one of the three titles, there’s no way to back out to the game selection screen to hop into another. You have to actually bring up the media bar, quit the game, and load it up all over again. It’s annoying when you’re reviewing the collection and jumping from one game to the next matters, but most players probably won’t even notice.

The only real complaint that I walked away with — and I don’t hold this against the collection as a whole, though I hope Sony takes note — is that the Ratchet & Clank Collection isn’t available for the PlayStation Vita. There is literally no reason why any of these three games wouldn’t be playable on the handheld… so why aren’t they? The Vita is fairly starved for content at the moment, and I’d frankly much rather play an HD remake of games that I’ve played before on that small screen, while on the go, rather than on my big TV.

That pretty much covers it. The collection also includes a digital version of each game’s manual as well as a download code that offers early access to the playable demo for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time. This is, in my opinion, Sony’s best collection of HD remakes yet. If you’re a fan of the Ratchet series then there is no reason not to snatch this one up, even if you’ve played through all of these games before. The visual and technical improvements are dramatic, and the early adventures of Ratchet and his robot pal Clank are still as fun as they ever were.