ASUS Transformer Prime TF201 Android 4.1.1, Jelly Bean update starts rolling out

ASUS announced on its Facebook page yesterday that the original Transformer Prime TF201 and the new Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T will be receiving the Android 4.1, Jelly Bean update shortly.

Now sticking to that statement, the company has started rolling out the update to the TF201, as is being reported by Engadget. As for the TF700T, it is yet to get the update but it shouldn’t be long before it too gets to enjoy some of the Jelly Bean goodness.

Meanwhile, owners of the cheaper Transformer Pad TF300T are well settled in with their Jelly Bean update by now, which they received last month.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Neither Treyarch or Infinity Ward are making Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified for PS Vita

Who's making Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified? Not Infinity Ward, makers of Modern Warfare, and not Treyarch, makers of Black Ops.

Activision wants everyone, from the lowliest nerd to the highest spending shareholder in the company, to know that it is the publisher behind Call of Duty. Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best-selling video game of all time? That was us! We’re all Call of Duty, all the time, us Activision folk. Unless you’re talking about Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified for PlayStation Vita. That might not be us.

That seemed to be the message at least when the first PS Vita version of the popular shooter series made its debut during Sony’s press conference at Gamescom in August. Activision was very quiet about the game, especially after the tepid response the first trailer received from press and fans. In fact, Activision wasn’t even clear on who is making it.

Not Treyarch and not Infinity Ward, says CVG. Neither of the studios responsible for Call of Duty’s annual HD console releases has worked on the Vita game. John Rafacz of Treyarch said his said hasn’t “been involved with the Vita version.” Rough!

Who is making the game? Nihilistic, an independent studio in California. Call of Duty obsessed Vita owners might want to dial back their excitement for the game even more considering Nihilistic’s most recent output. Its last game was Resistance: Burning Skies for PS Vita, a shooter built to showcase the handheld’s horsepower and capabilities as a platform for FPS games. It was instead a ramshackle series of boring levels and tacked on touch screen features.

Activision hasn’t totally separated itself from Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified. “Activision is the publisher, but we also have a partnership with Sony to bundle Declassified with the PlayStation Vita.” Translation: We’re sort of publishing, but Sony’s publishing it more than us!

The concern here is not just the poor quality of Declassified based on footage of the game. Yes, the footage is especially rough since the game is due out in just over a month. The real problem is the amount of money that Sony no doubt spent to get Activision to commit the brand to Vita at all. Activision has been reticent to publish on either Sony or Nintendo’s handhelds in recent years, recognizing that the devoted portable gaming market is contracting on a nearly daily basis. If Sony spent big to get Activision to just loan out the Call of Duty name, it’s not getting very much for its money.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Epic’s latest studio Impossible Games polishing up Infinity Blade: Dungeons

Former 38 Studios subsidiary Big Huge Games is now the Epic-owned Impossible Studios. Its first project: Infinity Blade: Dungeons.

Epic Games is expanding. The Unreal Engine studio behind Bulletstorm, Gears of War, and the upcoming Fortnite is, for the first time, seeking outside investment from companies like Tencent as it builds its video game making business into a survivor. It opened yet another branch studio this week. On its homepage, Epic announced the opening of Impossible Games. The Maryland-based studio will be working on Epic’s mobile projects, including Infinity Blade: Dungeons.

Impossible Studios is a new territory in the Epic empire, but the truth it it’s a lifeboat. The studio was first opened at the beginning of June after Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning creator 38 Studios laid off all staff, including the Baltimore-based Big Huge Games. A number of employees at Big Huge were snatched up by Epic and put up in a development house that was dubbed Epic Baltimore by fans on the Internet. Impossible Games is the official name for the studio rising from Big Huge’s ashes.

“We were so glad we could help keep this great team together, and we’re lucky to have them,” said Epic President Mike Capps in the announcement, “At the time, I said that finding a full team of superstars was ‘impossible’ and apparently the name stuck! Pairing the imagination and experience of Impossible with Epic’s technology, IP and resources makes for a business greater than the sum of its parts.”

Former Big Huge general manager Sean Dunn, whose credits include bonafide classics like Company of Heroes as well as Amalur, has been named studio director at Impossible. Its first project, Infinity Blade: Dungeons, is actually a collaboration between Shadow Complex studio ChAIR and Epic Cary, with the bulk of work happening at Impossible’s home base.

Infinity Blade: Dungeons will no doubt benefit from Impossible’s expertise in action RPGs. Early demos of the iPad game have been found wanting by the press. The look of the Diablo-style dungeon crawler has been praised but the touch-only interface has been finicky, lacking the simple precision of the Infinity Blade one-on-one fighters released to date. Since most of the game is already finished, it sounds as Impossible will simply be polishing the game’s quality.

Which begs the question: What will Impossible Games’ first project be? Capps’ comments indicate that Impossible will work with established Epic intellectual properties to start with which is understandable. Epic is likely still gun-shy about letting its satellite studios develop new IP after the disappointing 2011 performance of People Can Fly’s Bulletstorm. Maybe a Gears of War RPG? A new Infinity Blade for PCs and consoles? Nothing’s impossible!

And here I thought I could get through this without a single pun.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com