It looks like video game designer Hideo Kojima will be getting a Nintendo Switch on day one. In an interview with IGN at Rooster Teeth Expo in Sydney, Australia, Kojima compared the Switch to his “Transfarring” concept from 2011.
“You might be familiar with the fact that for a previous game that I did, we had a specification that we called ‘Transfarring’ where you could take the saved data from the PS Vita and move it over to the PS3 and back and forth like that,” said Kojima. “I believe [Switch] is an extension of that idea. The fact you can play something at home and take it outside, this is the gamer’s dream. The Switch is an evolution of that.”
Transfarring was a term coined by Kojima that married the words transferring and sharing. The idea was that gamers playing Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection on PlayStation 3 could move their save files and pick up the game on PlayStation Portable or PlayStation Vita.
“For example, often when you buy a Blu-Ray disc, it’ll have a code on the inside for a digital version, so in the same respect you can watch it at home and then take it on the go on your tablet and smartphone,” said Kojima. “This is how movies and TV are moving, and this is how games should go.”
Kojima does see the Switch as the impetus to a future in which gamers will be able to play their games on any device. “I feel like cloud technology is what everything will eventually move to,” he said. “It’s further behind right now than I think where people thought it would be at this point, but I think it will go there, and when the infrastructure is ready, you’ll be able to play everything, on every device, anywhere. The Switch is the predecessor to this step.”
Kojima is currently working on Death Stranding, starring Guillermo Del Toro and Mads Mikkelsen. The Nintendo Switch is set to launch on March 3.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.