Samsung's nearly $4 billion Austin plant expansion is a sign that the company's getting serious about building new, better processors for more than memory.

Samsung Electronics and the state government of Texas have finalized talks to invest $3.9 billion into the company’s facility in Austin. The South Korean company is already the top memory chip manufacturer in the world, according to International Business Times, and the new expansion will further bolster its production of system chips.

The move signals that Samsung is looking to reduce its dependence on the unpredictable market for memory processors and make bigger inroads into processors for tablets and smartphones. In an unusual twist, Samsung’s biggest client for those processors is Apple, Samsung’s longtime, bitter legal rival. However, Apple has indicated that it may be shopping around for a new supplier, with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) rumored to be a frontrunner. 

With the new expansion, Samsung is putting TSMC in its crosshairs. “Our ongoing, multibillion dollar investments in Austin will expand our footprint as a comprehensive semiconductor hub,” Woosung Han, president of Samsung Austin Semiconductor, said in a statement earlier in December. 

Samsung has had a busy year, from it’s well-publicized spats with Apple to big new product launches. Next year promises to be interesting as well, if the company’s recently released teaser trailer for CES 2013 is any indication. 

Image via opopododo

THQ has narrowly avoided death yet again. As the publisher enters bankruptcy proceedings to protect its existing projects, new information emerges about unannounced THQ games from the creators of Company of Heroes, Darksiders, and Assassin's Creed.

THQ will survive. Not thanks to the millions it raised during its recent sale alongside Humble Bundle, but thanks to the new deal it’s struck with the Clearlake Capital Group. The publisher behind Darksiders II and Saints Row The Third has entered into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, liquidating assets but keeping its core studios staffed and working on a number of games.

“Clearlake is even providing the company the money it needs to keep working on the products as the process plays itself out,” wrote THQ president Jason Rubin in a message on the publisher’s website Wednesday, “And importantly, when the purchase is complete, Clearlake has committed to invest additional ample capital to let us finish the games we are making and continue making games going forward. In short, they are investing in a new start for our company.”

Not much is known about what THQ has in production, though. Obsidian Entertainment is still plugging away on South Park: The Stick of Truth for THQ, while Volition is hard at work on Saints Row 4. THQ’s Chapter 11 filing reveals that the company has a number of other titles brewing in the background.

With Darksiders II complete and series mastermind Joe Madureira leaving the company, it’s unknown if studio Vigil will continue its tale of four apocalyptic horseman. It is, however, working on a game codenamed Crawler. This could be a codename of Darksiders III, but seeing as crawling isn’t a regular activity for the hulking protagonists in that series, it’s likely something new.

Company of Heroes creator Relic Entertainment is working on a 2014 title called Atlas. The company used to also work on Warhammer 40,000 games, but that license was recently acquired by Sega. Relic is planning to release Company of Heroes 2 in 2013. 

Former Valve studio Turtle Rock Studios is making a game called Evolve according to the filing. Turtle Rock announced that it was developing a game for THQ in 2011 but nothing has ever been shown. The group’s last title was Valve’s Left 4 Dead, which came out in 2008, though Turtle Rock did help with downloadable content for that game and its sequel.

Finally, THQ Montreal is working on a title called 1666. The publisher filed a trademark for the game earlier in 2012. THQ opened its Montreal studio in 2010 with Patrice Desilets, creative director of the first two Assassin’s Creed games, as its lead.

Soure: Polygon

Imo announced a new iPad app, with a design that mimics its existing iPhone app to provide users a seamless cross-platform experience, while also adding a few new features, like VoIP.

For quite some time now, Imo’s iPad app remained untouched, while new updates were being pushed to its Android and iPhone app. Yesterday Imo finally announced an updated iPad app that brings the design and interface up to speed with what iPhone and iPod Touch users have been playing around with since early November of this year.

The iPad app is essentially a replica of the existing iPhone app, but fit to the larger screen. A slight difference between the iPhone and iPad app that you’ll notice is that when you click on a contact’s profile picture, their contact information opens up in a floating box on the iPad app instead of opening up a new page. Also on the new iPad app the list of contacts has been fixed to the left-hand panel instead of the right, which is where it was located in the previous iPad version. On the iPhone app, you had to swipe to open up the contact list.

What will be new to its iPad users, aside from the redesign, is the VoIP and group photo sharing features that have been a staple of the Imo 2.0 redesign that’s been pushed to smartphones.

“Our VoIP feature and UI redesigns for iPhone and Android have proven extremely popular, and many of our users have requested these same functionalities on our iPad app. The recent changes to our iPhone and Android apps have been received very well, and now we’re able to offer the same user experience whether on the computer, smartphone or tablet. We want our users to have an easy, streamlined way to communicate with friends on all of our platforms, especially for people using multiple devices,” ” Imo.im CEO Ralph Harik told Digital Trends.

To recap, you can share photos with a group of friends by adding them to a group chat and sharing photos from your smartphone’s gallery. Or you can opt to take pictures with Imo’s in-app camera, which is a particularly useful feature should you want to pool all the photos that you and your friends from an event. Every photo that you take is automatically uploaded to the group’s chat and gallery in real-time – Facebook launched the real-time upload feature after Imo’s redesign. And after these photos are uploaded to the shared gallery, you can go back and browse, delete, or download the uploaded photos.

The other major feature added to iPad is VoIP capability. Calls over 3G, 4G, or Wi-Fi can be made to your Imo contacts without the calls eating into your carrier’s allotted monthly minutes.

Imo has been seeing increasing adoption rates as budding contender among messenger apps filling in for where Meebo bowed out, which is good news for the company. So far across platforms, Imo has been downloaded on five million mobile devices and sees 700,000 unique daily users with 50 million messages being sent on a daily basis.

But there’s room to grow as the competition among messaging apps intensifies. You might have noticed that the latest updates to Imo have been concerned with introducing new native features to Imo’s own messaging platform. Since its founding, Imo has integrated third-party messaging apps like AIM, Google Talk, Facebook Chat, and others. But as the messaging space matures and the upper crust of contenders like Whatsapp, Nimbuzz, Kakao Talk, LINE, and WeChat are vying for the global market with their proprietary messaging platforms, mid-sized niche competitors like Imo have to build out their own native mobile products. 

You can download the new iPad update here.

The new Black Isle Studios ended three months of radio silence with a call for crowd-funding on its website. The new studio is looking to make a post-apocalyptic RPG called Project V13 but it doesn't reveal who will actually be making it.

The  house known as Black Isle Studios is not the house formerly known as Black Isle Studios. The iconic Interplay studio responsible for Fallout, Icewind Dale and Planscape: Torment disbanded in 2003 but suddenly re-emerged at the end of August promising to “make the world’s best RPGs.” The new Black Isle broke its silence on Thursday, updating its homepage asking for funding from the audience for a codenamed game, Project V13, but the update raises more questions about the studio than it answers.

“Project V13 is the first planned Black Isle Studios release in years, a post-apocalyptic strategy RPG,” reads the update, “Your character will be a hardy adventurer from a variety of backgrounds; one of the last remaining humans, a new breed mutant, or a technologically advanced cyborg.” The post goes on to describe how you’re found a colony in the ruins of the world and fill it with goods and citizens found while questing about the world.

If that sounds similar to a handful of other post-apocalyptic role-playing games, that’s because it is. Project V13 is, based on that description, not too dissimilar from the original Black Isle Studios’ Fallout series or Black Isle-founder Brian Fargo’s Wasteland. With Fargo’s InXile Entertainment making Wasteland 2 and ZeniMax Bethesda holding the Fallout license, it’s no wonder Black Isle is using a different name while also returning to its roots.

The question remains, though: Just who is it returning to their roots here? In August, Brian Fargo said there wasn’t enough information about the new Black Isle for him to comment. Obsidian Entertainment, headed by Chris Avellone and staffed by many of the former creators at the old Black Isle Studios is hard at work on its own games like Project Eternity. “[The new Black Isle] doesn’t involve Obsidian at all,” said Avellone in August, “No idea what it’s about. I wasn’t aware of anything beyond the name was left at Interplay.”

“We’re an experienced team of game developers,” reads Black Isle’s vague message, “We need to raise money to put together a prototype. We need more developers and staff. This is a big world we’re developing.”

The site is asking users to pledge $10 or $20 to the game, but neither amount gives access to the non-existent game. All that money gives access to is different sections of a Black Isle forum that won’t open until sometime in January.

We’ve emailed Interplay for clarification on who, if anyone, is actually staffing this new studio.