Gaijin Entertainment’s Action MMO Star Conflict Is Now Available on Steam
Prepare for lift-off! Today you can explore the Star Conflict universe and become part of its history!
Gaijin Entertainment is pleased to announce that Star Conflict, a space-themed action MMO for PC that has been in beta for the past year, is now available on Steam. After a year of hard work improving the game based on beta testers’ feedback, Gaijin and Yekaterinburg-based developer Star Gem, Inc. are pleased to welcome players from all over the world to the Star Conflict universe. You can register to participate in the open beta and download the game client through Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/212070/), as well as from the official website (http://star-conflict.com/).
Star Conflict takes place in a remote future, in a time when mankind seems to have discovered all of the secrets of the Universe, and the boundaries of knowledge have been left far behind by progress. But on the very edge of the galaxy, in Sector 1337, a random expedition unexpectedly reveals a dead, deserted world—the ruins of a great civilization of Precursors that was destroyed by an unknown anomaly. This discovery comes with a price, as the desire to uncover this ancient civilization’s mysteries aggravates the ongoing conflict between the factions that are constantly fighting for control of the universe. Now everyone from warriors to peaceful astrologers is hunting for ancient artifacts and trying to learn the mysteries of the Wise. This is where Star Conflict begins—with a space battle between three factions, the outcome of which will determine who will rule the stars.
People who played Star Conflict a year ago won’t even recognize it today. During the closed and open beta tests, Star Conflict gained a new PvE game mode. You can also choose from one of three factions—Empire, Federation, or Jericho—each with its own distinct ships. In addition to interface changes (such as a brand new hangar and an updated graphical UI), new tutorial screens are now available for all the game’s major elements. Also, the original gameplay elements have been enhanced to add to the excitement, such as a modified tree of ships, new contracts, new game modes, and new gameplay difficulty levels. There’s also a brand new Corporation System that allows you to choose your leaders and conquer space.
To provide players with interesting and useful details about the game’s content, Gaijin has updated the official Star Conflict website (http://star-conflict.com). There, you can learn the history of every in-game location, check out the specific abilities of warriors from different factions, and find the bravest pilots and the best killers in the new Ratings section. Plus, developer diaries and fan-videos are just a few of the goodies you can find in the Community section.
The game has gone through a lot of changes in the past year, and with today’s launch on Steam you can see them for yourself. This is just the beginning for this expansive space MMO: one small step for the developers, and a giant leap for the Star Conflict universe.
About the Developer – Star Gem, Inc.
Star Gem, Inc. (previously known as Targem) was established in 2011 by game industry veterans to bring high-quality online entertainment to players worldwide. Star Gem, Inc. is dedicated to the creation of cutting-edge multiplayer games. Visit the developer’s official website: http://stargem-games.com/
About the Publisher – Gaijin Entertainment
Gaijin Entertainment specializes in the development of games for the PC, PS4 and Xbox 360. The company also conducts technology-related research, allowing it to remain responsive to and on the cutting edge of the rapidly changing IT market. Gaijin’s projects have received numerous media and game industry awards, including KRI awards for “Best Simulator for Next-Gen Consoles” (IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey for the PS3 and Xbox 360), “Best Technologies” (Dagor EngineTM), “Best Sound” and more.
Learn more at: http://gaijinent.com/
To get further information about Star Conflict and to register for participation in the open beta test, please visit: http://star-conflict.com
iTunes U Content Tops One Billion Downloads
CUPERTINO, California?1 March, 2013?Apple® today announced that iTunes U® content downloads have topped one billion. iTunes U features the world’s largest online catalog of free educational content from top schools and prominent libraries, museums and organisations helping educators create courses including lectures, assignments, books, quizzes and more for iOS users around the world.
“It’s inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before?there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn.”
More than 1,200 universities and colleges, and 1,200 K-12 schools and districts host over 2,500 public and thousands of private courses encompassing the arts, sciences, health and medicine, education, business and more. Leading universities including Duke, Yale, Cambridge, MIT and Oxford continue to extend their reach by enrolling more than 100,000 students in single iTunes U courses, with Stanford University and The Open University each surpassing 60 million content downloads. The Ohio State University’s Matthew “Dr. Fus” Stoltzfus’ General Chemistry course enrolled over 100,000 iTunes U students in the first year it was offered.
“The interest my iTunes U course receives from non-college students is overwhelming,” said Professor Stoltzfus. “I’ve been working with high school teachers who use my iTunes U material to prepare to teach their own classes, high school students all over the world who are leveraging the course to tutor their fellow classmates, even retirees who download my iTunes U course to stay intellectually active.”
Over 60 percent of iTunes U app downloads originate from outside the US, giving schools of any size the ability to share their content with a worldwide audience. The unmatched global reach of iTunes U gives educators, like University of California, Irvine Professor Dan Stokols, international recognition and acclaim in their fields.
“Because of iTunes U, I have been able to introduce students and colleagues in China to research on the links between chronic multi-tasking, information overload and stress; discuss research publications and degree programs with students in Europe; and exchange information about the influence of neighborhood design on community levels of physical activity and obesity with students in Australia,” said Professor Stokols, whose Environmental Psychology course enrolls over 170,000 students on iTunes U. “The opportunity to impact so many students who are gaining interest in environmental psychology by taking my free course on iTunes U has been highly rewarding and gratifying for me as an educator and learner.”
“I see success unfolding before me on a daily basis,” says Chrissy Boydstun, a teacher from Mansfield Independent School District in Texas which provides each of their over 10,000 high school students and faculty with an iPad®. “Students are engaged and working hard as they use the incredible amount of information at their fingertips in a way that is meaningful and impactful. I love the way iTunes U provides a roadmap to take students beyond what a typical lesson or lecture could achieve.”
Educators can create iTunes U courses in 30 countries including recent additions: Brazil, South Korea, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. These courses, and other education content, can be accessed via the iTunes U app in 155 countries. In addition to thousands of individual iTunes U learning materials, over 75,000 educational apps are now available for iOS devices on the App Store?. Additionally, with the free iBooks® Author app on the Mac® App Store, writers and publishers continue to bring ideas and stories to life sharing more than 10,000 original Multi-Touch™ books with the world.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
3DMark 11 v1.0.4 released, now fully compatible with Windows 8
We have updated 3DMark 11 to version 1.0.4, which makes the benchmark fully compatible with Windows 8. The update also addresses other compatibility issues and a few uncommon bugs. Benchmark scores are not affected and scores from this new version can be compared with scores from the previous version 3DMark 11 v1.0.3.
To get the update download the 3DMark v1.0.4 installer from one of our partner mirror sites.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dmark11/download
People using the Steam version of 3DMark 11 will get the update automatically when they next restart the Steam client.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/205270/
The major changes in 3DMark v1.0.4 include:
IMPROVEMENTS
– Keyboard focus is no longer checked during the demo or when running the benchmark in a loop. Note that if the display switches to the desktop due to a popup window during the benchmark, the run will still be aborted as the display mode is no longer the same.
– 3DMark 11 now remembers the last custom resolution used.
– GPU count detection for multi-GPU systems is now correct even when SystemInfo is explicitly disabled.
– 3DMark 11 will now prevent Windows from entering Sleep during the test.
– The license key is now reset when the benchmark is reinstalled, allowing removal of invalid keys.
COMPATIBILITY
– SystemInfo updated to version 4.15 for full Windows 8 compatibility.
– Updated DirectX redistributable.
– Now using static Visual C++ 2010 runtime libraries to fix rare installation issues on some systems.
– Removed dependency on EvaDotNet.dll and EvaDotNet.DirectX.dll for GPU enumeration to fix compatibility issues with some systems.
BUG FIXES
– Fixed display initialization code that caused “SetFullscreenState failed: DXGI_ERROR_NOT_CURRENTLY_AVAILABLE” errors on some systems.
– Fixed several memory and texture leaks, improving stability during very long looping runs.
– The HUD timer no longer rolls over if a single test takes more than ten minutes. (Yes, this could happen during the Combined Test on some low end DirectX 11 cards.)
PROFESSIONAL EDITION ONLY
– Fixed submitting saved files to 3dmark.com from the command line.
– Image Quality Tool no longer gives a cryptic error if the output directory does not exist.
TOMB RAIDER REBORN TRAILER
With just a few days to go before Tomb Raider’s launch on March 5th, and hot on the heels of reviews hitting worldwide, Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix now bring you their latest trailer, ‘REBORN”.
Acronis Expands Data Protection Platform for Hybrid Environments
Sydney and Woburn, Mass. – 28 February 2013– Recognising a serious shift in enterprise needs for data protection, Acronis today announced that it has expanded beyond the traditional backup and disaster recovery market to encompass a broader strategy for delivering secure data availability, accessibility and protection.
The widespread adoption of virtualization and cloud computing, alongside tablets, smartphones and the Apple® Mac® within businesses, significantly increases the risk of data loss and leakage, which cannot be prevented with conventional approaches using outdated technologies from legacy vendors. With its focus on the protection and movement of data, regardless of platform or environment, Acronis is presenting further expansion of its comprehensive platform to address this risk, easily, simply, and reliably for organisations of all sizes.
In 2012, Acronis’ virtualization data protection business grew by nearly 60 percent worldwide. This, alongside Acronis’ continued cloud business growth, is strong evidence of the demand for a more innovative, comprehensive platform that eliminates IT complexity and allows companies to establish one set of data protection policies, using one technology, across all environments. The increase in hybrid IT environments requires new approaches to solve the data protection and availability problems these complex environments create.
Alex Pinchev, president and CEO, Acronis, said, “Companies are adopting new technologies faster than they can plan effective data protection strategies. Yet IT is responsible for data protection across all technologies and environments. After all, data can only be used if it can be securely accessed, protected and available regardless of platform or environment, tablet or smartphone.
“Acronis is delivering a comprehensive platform strategy that allows customers to more simply and reliably mitigate the risk to data in today’s world, in ways no legacy vendor can. By keeping data at the center of our development effort, we focus on removing the constraints of hybrid environments by enabling the secure, protected movement of data while reducing risks of data loss and leakage.”
Laura DuBois, program vice president for the Storage practice at IDC, commented, “We see the forces of Big Data, virtualization, cloud and the growing population of workers with three or more disparate devices changing the landscape of data protection forever. Our research shows that with the next wave of virtualization, users will increasingly embrace multiple hypervisors in their environments. Organizations will be facing an increasingly complex management and security burden.”
From the initial imaging product development in 2002, Acronis has always focused on the protection of data, regardless of platform or environment, enabling seamless movement and greater efficiency. The imaging technology central to Acronis innovation enables the granular availability of every object, file, machine or system – regardless of location. Acronis’ Unified Platform, which supports all major hypervisors, has been on the market for nearly two years and is proven in thousands of networks worldwide. These latest extensions will bring greater flexibility to an organization’s ability to move, access and protect critical data.
PERSONA®4 GOLDEN™ AVAILABLE IN RETAIL STORES ACROSS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
NIS America with ATLUS, a brand of Index Digital Media, are proud to announce the availability of Persona®4 Golden™ in retail stores across Australia and New Zealand today. The game is available for the PlayStation®Vita handheld entertainment system. Persona 4 Golden is an enhanced and extended version of the highly acclaimed, award-winning RPG Shin Megami Tensei®: Persona®4. It offers beautifully remastered visuals, 1.5 times the amount of voiced dialogue of the original release, and a new online dungeon rescue feature. Persona 4 Golden also offers a massive amount of new content—new Personas, new story events with an all-new character, striking new anime cutscenes, and much more!
Persona 4 Golden is the highest scoring PS Vita title on Metracritic website, with a score of 93%. http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-vita/persona-4-golden
About the game:
A rumor has been spreading through the high school of a rural town: staring into the darkened screen of a powered-off television on a rainy night will reveal your one true love. But investigating this rumor uncovers a dark truth, and leads to an adventure through the strange world waiting on the other side of the TV screen…
Features:
A bigger, better version of one of the best RPGs ever: Improved visuals, new anime cut scenes, tons of new story and voiced dialogue, and much more, combined with deep turn-based combat, addictive character and Persona management, and a memorable cast of personalities.
Make meaningful bonds with characters via social links: In between its exploration, battles, and Persona management, Persona 4 Golden lets players choose how they wish to spend their time each day in a variety of different activities. What they opt to do and who they choose to spend time with can have a significant impact on their experience.
Will you uncover the true ending to the story?: Over 100 hours of gameplay thrusts you into a deep mystery where midnight television leads to serial killings. You must investigate murders, rescue those who can be rescued, and unmask the culprit behind it all… Or risk being forever shrouded in the fog of doubt.
ASUS Launches the MeMO Pad™ 7-inch Android Tablet
A compact and stylish tablet with high-resolution multi-touch display from AUD$199
Sydney, Australia (28 February, 2013) — ASUS today launched the MeMO Pad™, a stylish and compact 7-inch Android tablet with a RRP of AUD$199. The ASUS MeMO Pad features a 350-nit brightness display with 10-point multi-touch and 1024 x 600 resolution, along with SD card expansion capabilities up to 32GB. It has a diamond-patterned finish and is available in three colours. Together with the ASUS Transformer Pad™ Series, the MeMO Pad is the newest member of the ASUS Android tablet family.
Portability in three different colours
Pronounced “meemo”, MeMO stands for “My Mobile. My Moment” which reflects that the MeMO Pad is a tablet for people on-the-go. Measuring 196.2 x 119.2 x 11.2mm, the MeMO Pad can be easily held in one hand. Available in three colours – Sugar White, Titanium Grey and Cherry Pink — the MeMO Pad sports an elegant, non-slip diamond-patterned finish. The MeMO Pad is a tablet-only product and does not come with a dock.
Created for both work and play
ASUS MeMO Pad runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1GHz VIA WM8950 CPU and a Mali-400 GPU for a smooth web browsing experience. It features a 10-point multi-touch LED-backlit display with 1024 x 600 (170 points-per-inch) resolution and 140-degree wide viewing angle, and its 350-nit brightness means images remain clear, even outdoors. MeMO Pad also features ASUS SonicMaster audio and MaxxAudio for high-quality sound.
ASUS MeMO Pad has up to 16GB internal storage, which can be supplemented by up to 32GB via the microSD card slot. A suite of ASUS applications are also pre-installed, including SuperNote Lite, BuddyBuzz, ASUS WebStorage, ASUS Studio and WebStorage Office for enhanced productivity.
AVAILABILITY & PRICING
The ASUS MeMO Pad will be available in Australia in early March from authorised ASUS resellers and major retailers including JB HiFi, Dick Smith Electronics, Bing Lee & Leading Edge. Distributors include Synnex and Dicker Data. The MeMO Pad has a RRP of AUD$199.
SPECIFICATIONS 1
| CPU / GPU | VIA WM8950 (1GHz) / Mali-400 |
| Operating system | Android™ 4.1 Jelly Bean |
| Display | 7-inch (1024 x 600, 170PPI) LED-backlit 10-point multi-touch 140-degree wide viewing angle 350-nits brightness |
| Front Camera | 1MP back-illuminated sensor, f/2.0, with 720p HD video capture at 30fps |
| Storage | 1GB RAM 8GB or 16GB storage with microSD card slot (up to 32GB) 5GB free ASUS WebStorage |
| Wireless | 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi |
| Connectivity | 3.5mm headphone/mic Microphone Micro-USB port |
| Sensors | G-Sensor |
| Pre-installed ASUS applications | SuperNote Lite ASUS WebStorage ASUS WebStorage Online Office ASUS Studio BuddyBuzz MyPainter MyBitCast |
| Battery | 7 hours (16Wh Li-polymer, 4270mAh) |
| Available colors | Sugar White/Titanium Grey/Cherry Pink2 |
| Size | 196.2 x 119.2 x 11.2 mm |
| Weight | 370g |
1 Specifications, content and product availability are all subject to change without notice and may differ from country to country. Actual performance may vary depending on applications, usage, environment and other factors.
2 Colour availability will vary depending on retailers. Please check with your local retailer for colour availability.