The quad-core driven PS Vita certainly packs a punch as far as hardware is concerned. However, mighty specs are not all that it has in its favor. The American and European versions of the Vita will come with a set of six augmented reality cards that can be used for a fun and unique gaming experience.

These cards can be laid out on any surface to dynamically create objects within compatible AR games. Earlier today, Sony Santa Monica Sr. Manager Dave Thach demonstrated one of the AR minigames – Table Football (Pocket Soccer in the US), in action. As you can see in the video below, each of these cards can be spread out on any flat surface to create everything from the football field to goal posts and stands. The game itself is simplistic, but is smart enough to adapt itself to the field created by you. Aspects such as velocity of the ball automatically change based on the size of the field. The Vita also remembers where your cards are, so you can simply move your Vita for zooming and panning.

The Vita will launch in North America on February 22.

Steam is rocking the PC gaming community with its spectacular holiday sale. However, mobile gaming aficionados need not feel left out. Gameloft is planning to kick off the new year with a massive discount on its Android games. All games, with the exception of the recently released Modern Combat 3, will be available for 99 cents on the Android Market for one week.

December is turning out to be a good month for Android users as Google gave away scores of popular apps for 10 cents, Getjar offered hundred hot apps for free, and EA heavily discounted some of its popular titles. Gameloft’s portfolio includes everything from racing blockbusters like the Asphalt series and action games like Nova and Backstab to sports games like NFL and Let’s Golf. Typically Gameloft games can cost up to seven bucks; however, beginning tomorrow, all paid Gameloft games will be available for just $0.99. The sale will last till January 5. Modern Combat 3, which is exempt from the sale, will also be available for 99 cents at some point during the week. Recombu has confirmed that this sale isn’t US only, and all the games will be available in the UK for 69p.

The Xbox 360 is still selling like hot cakes, but rumors surrounding the next-gen Xbox console are coming in thick and fast. The media has even come up with a tacky name for the Xbox 360 successor – “Xbox 720″! With conflicting rumors and absolutely no concrete information, it’s nigh impossible to figure out exactly what Microsoft has in store for us. However, one thing that is almost certain is that the next-gen Xbox won’t show up before 2013. The 360, along with its Kinect peripherals, are simply selling too well for Microsoft to consider a successor. As Digital Foundry rightly argues, Microsoft will essentially be cutting its profits if it releases a new console in 2012. A next-gen console demands state of the art production facilities and often has to be subsidized during the initial years.

Nevertheless, whenever the Xbox successor shows up, it will probably come in two flavors. Digital Foundry believes that Microsoft will release a stripped down version of the next-gen Xbox that will essentially act as a set-top box and support casual arcade and Kinect games. The lower-end device will help Microsoft in tackling the challenge posed by WiiU. The second full-powered system will be targeted at hardcore gamers and compete with Sony’s PlayStation 4. It will feature an optical drive, a hard disk and backward compatibility with 360 games to entice the audience that doesn’t mind paying a premium.

I honestly did not know what I was getting into with Bastion, an indie game that came with a bucketload of recommendations and a folder full of evocative screenshots. I knew it was a highly recommended game, it was an Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title and that it was a hack-n-slash role playing game (RPG).

Nobody warned me about the haunting storyline and the beautiful soundtrack. Even if they did, I was too busy staring at the gorgeous screenshots to notice.

Bastion is, as mentioned before, an action RPG in which you play as the Kid a young silver-haired fellow who is as silent throughout the game as Gordon Freeman is in Half Life. The Kid wakes up at the end of a world-ending Calamity and seeks out the Bastion where he was told to go in times like these. There he finds out much and more about the Calamity and what he must do to repair the damage. However, the subtext of memory, remembrance and nostalgia is at times so subtle that it is invisible and at others, too jarring to be of any use. It is thus a good idea to re-play the game to understand a good chunk of the plot properly.

The Kid’s story is told by a kindly old narrator as you plod through the game. Each and every action of the kid is narrated dynamically by the narrator and the story itself is furthered by the narrator’s words. The world literally falls into place as the Kid progresses through the story, so much so that if you play this game without turning up the sound you are missing out.

The music of the game complements the storyline and its redolently striking art style. In a world that has been shaken by an unknown Calamity every level is a shadow of its former self, yet as the Kid plods through the worlds, Bastion‘s music touches upon that level’s former beauty and shakes poignant chords in the player’s heart. In one level, I was completely mesmerized by a melancholy song to the extent that I stopped playing for a few minutes just to listen to that song. The tune lingered throughout my playthrough from that point onwards and I am sure it will stay in my mind much longer.

The gameplay is quite similar to other hack-n-slash games, with a variety of weapons to unlock. You can select your loadout (the weapon that you will use with the left click, the right click and a special weapon as well) before starting a mission, or sometimes during the mission itself. The levels themselves vary in difficulty and it is essential that you get used to a set of weapons and upgrade them as you play the game.

The game is a treasure-trove for the 100%-ers (gamers who wish to do everything and find everything in a game) since there is way too much to do. You can finish a level in your own time, or go to a training level to earn trinkets and upgrade materials. There are achievements to unlock and level-hardening idols to worship. There is a lot to do in this game and it does not get boring too fast (however it does since after a point, it’s just mindless clicking. I still maintain that Diablo II mastered the art of keeping one entertained through hours of mouseclicks).

I heartily recommend Bastion to any fan of action RPGs or indie games. It’s a surprisingly well-made game that will keep you entertained enough for at least two playthroughs, while the soundtrack will haunt your ears for a longer time.

Quirkypricing is obviously a commonplace phenomenon with indie games as a lot of them want great sales without selling their game for $0 and it is great exposure when your game is bundled along with heavy hitters of the indie scene. There’s also the question of alpha funding for many games (Project Zomboid comes to mind) (I jest) and these quirkily priced bundles are an excellent way to get some money before your game is finished. Wolfire Games’ initiative the widely known Humble Indie Bundle was one of the first game bundles to offer a unique Pay-What-You-Want scheme for buying a bunch of incredible games. Indiegames.com and indie digital distributor Desura took this idea a little further with their recently released Indie Royale Bundle.

What is so unique about the Indie Royale Bundle? Straight from their mouths:-

[From a starting point of $1.99 for the first bundle], Indie Royale uses a unique new pricing mechanism. The total cost for the four-game bundle (which are worth over if $40 purchased separately) gradually increases as more bundles are bought, with early adopters guaranteed the best deals, and prices remaining competitive throughout.

There’s also a brilliant method that entices Samaritans who wish to help both the developers as well as other customers; if you buy the bundle at a higher price (say $50) then the effective price of the bundle comes down a few points:-

…those who choose to pay more than the current cost to support the indie developers and the people behind the bundle will appear on the front page of Indie Royale as part of a special section, with their name and URL called out specifically. In the process, they will drop the price of the game bundle for everyone else anywhere from several cents to multiple dollars! This pricing methodology will likely spawn unpredictable but entertaining results, and the creators of Indie Royale are looking forward to seeing the pricing trends that result.

The current bundle includes A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda, Nimbus, Gemini Rue and Sanctum. Gemini Rue is supposedly an excellent point-and-click game that I am yet to play and since I have bought the bundle you may see a review of it soon enough! Moreover, new bundles will be released in a few days with different combinations of games to have fun with.

As an addendum: the site works well with Indian debit cards! My purchase went through without routing over to VbV and I was the happy owner of four fun indie games.

Microsoft has figured out an interesting way to get into the social games business. The social gaming market continues to grow in terms of number of users and profits. These social applications have the potential to grow from a few users to millions of users in an incredibly short period of time, and therefore, they need a robust, scalable, and dependable platform.

According to the Social Gaming: Marketers Make Their Move report by eMarketer,  the social gaming market will increase to $1.32 billion in revenues by 2012, up from $856 million in 2010. Today, Amazon hosts many online games, including big Facebook games, developed by Zynga and others. Companies like Playdom, the makers of Bola Social Soccer – a Facebook, Sonico, and Orkut game with over 5 million users, are already using Windows Azure as their backend platform.

Microsoft is focusing on building tools to help other game developers ramp up quickly, while they host their games on Windows Azure. Windows Azure is built on the principles of on-demand scalable computing resources, storage, and geographic delivery. These principles mirror the needs of social games. With that premise, the Windows Azure team has launched a preview of the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games. The toolkit allows you to quickly get started building new social games with Windows Azure whether you want to build social games as a hobby or you want to reach millions of gamers.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games allows you to quickly get started building new social games in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes accelerators, libraries, developer tools, and samples that you can use in your own .NET or HTML5 game. It enables unique capabilities that are prerequisites for an average social game, such as storing user profiles, maintaining leader boards, in-app purchasing and so forth.

As a proof-of-concept, the toolkit also includes source code for a game called Tankster, created by Grant Skinner, a popular game developer. The game is also available online to play for free. The game is built with HTML5 and supports a variety of social interactions including messaging, wall posts, and comments while player achievements and game stats are presented on a live leaderboard so gamers can interact with each other.

The toolkit is available for free, and game developers can use the same to build social games and applications in a short period of time.

After months of speculation, and a surprising albeit brief appearance in the Android Market, Cut the Rope from ZeptoLab has finally landed on Android. GetJar has again managed to score an exclusive deal; however, the ZeptoLab bestseller should become available in the Android Market after twenty four hours.

Cut the Rope for iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod) has been topping the charts and receiving rave reviews ever since its release. The objective of the game is rather simple. You have to guide the candy that is attached to one or more ropes into the mouth of a hungry monster, called Om Nom, by cutting the rope at critical points. To earn brownie points, you have to pick up the stars scattered throughout the level.

Like Rovio, ZeptoLab is also opting for the freemium model on Android. The version hosted by GetJar is free, but advertisement supported. The same version will make its way to the Android Market soon. Additionally, we expect an ads-free premium version to make its appearance in the Market.

Since the game’s release in October, ZeptoLab has released numerous level packs including a special Valentines day pack. The Android version includes all the level packs, which means that the game ships with a massive 175 levels. You can go ahead and grab the game from here. However, be warned. It is dangerously addictive.

Advertisements are a major source for revenues and one would expect ads to evolve with the platform they are being served on. Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect is about body gestures and voice, like iOS is about touch. For iOS, Apple introduced iAds, an advertising platform for app developers to create apps that offer an interactive and beautiful experience for the user. Similarly, Microsoft seems to be planning their own advertising platform for the Xbox that will leverage Kinect’s capabilities.

Called NUAds, which I assume could mean Natural User Ads (NUI or Natural User Interface is something Microsoft has been talking about for quite a while.) A recent trademark application filed by Microsoft explains what NUAds is:

Advertising services, namely, promoting and marketing the goods and services of others through online interactive video games by enabling consumers to interact with third-party advertising content through voice or body gestures via computer game console and sensor devices

As the description explains, NUAds will be in-game advertisements where the user can interact with the products or features being advertised using Kinect’s body tracking and voice control. Even though a lot of us don’t like ads interrupting  our activities, adding gesture control could change the experience.

Microsoft will be having some policies on how game publishers will be using NUAds and we shall share more information as we get it.

This is the future of advertisements, Minority Report style.

One has to hand it to Nintendo for being willing to take risks. It kick-started the motion gaming revolution with its Nintendo Wii in 2006. Last year, it made a bold move by announcing the Nintendo 3DS, a handheld gaming device with glasses-free 3D display. Now, it is trying to shake things up again with the Nintendo Wii U.

Nintendo Wii U is the successor to the massively popular Nintendo Wii. Once again Nintendo is targeting casual users more than hardcore gamers. In fact, Nintendo is officially calling the Wii U a “home console” instead of a “gaming console”.

As you might expect, the Wii U boasts of significantly improved hardware. It has an IBM Power based multi-core CPU, and a custom designed AMD Radeon HD GPU. This means that Wii U games will look at least as good as current PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games. The Wii U also supports full HD video output, and has a front-facing camera. The console will have internal flash memory, but you can use an ordinary SD card or an external USB hard disk drive to expand its storage. However, the real draw of the console is not its powerful hardware, but its innovative new controller.

The Wii U comes with a tablet-like 6.2-inch touchscreen controller, which also has all the traditional controls, including two analog Circle Pads. The touchscreen can replicate the image being sent to the television, and can be used to continue gaming when the television is unavailable. It can also provide entirely different perspectives and can add an extra dimension to gaming. It’s difficult to describe in words exactly how this controller works. Check out the trailer video embedded below to understand the full potential of the Wii U controller.

Nintendo Wii U Trailer Video

The Wii U supports all Nintendo Wii controllers and up to four Wii Remotes can be connected at once. However, Nintendo hasn’t yet revealed how many Wii U controllers can be paired.

What the Wii U is trying to pull off is ambitious and bold. It will be up to the game developers to leverage the Wii U in an intuitive and ingenious manner. If they succeed, then Nintendo might have another huge hit in their hands. The Wii U is slated to be released in 2012.

Tech Demo Demonstrating the Graphics Prowess of the Wii U

A short while back, Sony Computer Entertainment president Kaz Hirai officially announced Sony’s next generation handheld gaming device the PlayStation Vita. Vita, which was originally codenamed NGP (Next Generation Portable) will succeed the ageing PlayStation Portable, which was announced way back in 2004.

The word Vita means Life, and Sony believes that Vita has the muscles to be able to blur the differences between entertainment and real life for the first time on a handheld console. The Vita has a 4-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and a 200 MHz SGX543MP4+ GPU. In short, it blows away Nintendo’s 3DS and other handheld gaming devices like the Xperia Play. The powerful hardware will be well complemented by the 5 inch OLED capacitive multi-touch screen (with rear touch panel) that boasts of a resolution of 960 x 544. The combination of larger than average size with a mightily impressive resolution means that everything from games to HD Videos will look stunning on the Vita.

Vita Announcement Video

Besides the standard PlayStation buttons, the Vita has two analog sticks and a D-pad. The device also has front and rear facing cameras, stereo speakers, six-axis motion sensor, GPS, and Bluetooth connectivity.

Sony has tied up with over 150 developers, and there should be an impressive number of titles available at launch. Games for the Vita will be distributed on NVG cards, which will be available in 2 GB and 4 GB sizes. Some of the games that have been announced include Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. The Vita will also be capable of playing existing PlayStation Portable (PSP) games.

Sony is pushing augmented reality and location-aware games along with social gaming on the Vita. A feature called “Party” will allow gamers in the same room to voice chat with each other. Another feature called “Near” will allow you to connect and play with other gamers around you.

Sony will release two editions of the Vita a Wi-Fi only version for $249, and a Wi-Fi+3G version for $299. In the US, Vita will be exclusive to AT&T. It will be launched during the holiday season this year.

Vita Trailer Video

Vita’s closest competitor is obviously the Nintendo 3DS, which impressed us in last year’s E3. The 3DS’ biggest selling point is obviously its ability to support glasses free 3D imagery. However, when it comes to raw power the Vita absolutely owns the 3DS. Once again, it appears that the Nintendo’s offering will appeal more to the casual gamers, while Sony’s VIta will appeal to enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. However, at $249, the 3DS might be too expensive for casual gamers, but the Vita might be perfectly priced for gaming enthusiasts.