Panasonic had its slim SC-HC3 iPod / CD dock on display in its booth at CES so we made the long trek to LVCC’s central hall from our sweet double-wide HQ. For some reason, they didn’t have a single iPod available for us to test it with (go figure), but the thing wasn’t lacking in the looks department. If you’re interested, Panasonic’s estimating availability for March at around $200. Still images of the system in action are available below, or peep some video of the sliding mechanism after the break.

Continue reading Video: Panasonic SC-HC3 iPod stereo system hands-on

Filed under: CES, Home Entertainment

Video: Panasonic SC-HC3 iPod stereo system hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Biz

On Friday Eidos announced that due to lower than expected sales of Tomb Raider Underworld their previous estimates for their full year revenues would fall short of expectations. Now Kotaku, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that 30 team members from the game’s developer Crystal Dynamics have now been laid off.

The report did not say how many other team members remain at the developer which shares space with Eidos’ US branch in Northern California. Eidos said early on Friday that while Tomb Raider Underworld sold well in Europe and worldwide sales have totaled 1.5 million units so far the game did not sell as expected in the US.

Rumor: More layoffs at Eidos? originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Culture, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PSP, Microsoft Xbox 360

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has been indicted on 12 counts, including four counts of perjury and two counts of theft over $500, following a three-year probe by a state prosecutor into corruption at City Hall. According to the Baltimore Sun, among the laundry list of charges against Dixon, which cover awarding lucrative contracts to family members and general misconduct in office, she also allegedly stole from those most in need and went console shopping.

According to prosecutors, a few years back Dixon used Best Buy gift cards, intended for underprivileged families, to purchase a PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 and PSP — along with other pieces of consumer electronics. Dixon says she has done nothing wrong and is confident she’ll be found innocent. She better pray that Best Buy doesn’t keep videos of transactions in some vault for years.

[Via GamePolitics]

Baltimore mayor allegedly purchased consoles with gift cards for the needy originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The dust has begun to settle around Palm’s event yesterday, and we’re still sorting through all the news. Palm certainly packed a lot of “New-ness” (yet weirdly, no actual “New-ness”) into its announcements yesterday, and it’s pretty easy to get lost among all the Palm Pre / webOS related news. Lucky for you, we’ve consolidated the goods below, so feel free to experience all the Palm-related bliss you can handle.

The liveblog

Live from Palm’s CES press conference

Impressions / hands-on coverage

Palm Pre first hands-on with live updates!
Palm Pre in-depth impressions, video, and huge hands-on gallery
Palm Pre interface tour

Product announcements

The Palm Pre
Palm announces webOS platform
Palm Pre’s wireless charger, the Touchstone

In depth / details

There will be a GSM-friendly 3G Palm Pre
Palm stock on a rocket to recovery
Palm’s Pre gets its own spot on Sprint’s website
Palm Pre website now live with official images, video
Palm’s the master of its own domain, the king of its own Castle
Palm’s Pre boxed
Palm Pre ads appear on Engadget

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre / webOS launch roundup originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Aftermarket, Tuners, Supercars, Porsche

Click above for a high-res gallery of the SPI Sledgehammer

Most stock components in a production car can only be pushed so far. Keep adding horsepower and torque, and eventually…well, something is going to break. Some people, however, are all about exploring the limits. Take Tym Switzer, for example. His tuning company, Switzer Performance Innovation of Oberlin, Ohio has come up with a bolt-on tuning package for the Porsche 997 911 Turbo that offers Bugatti Veyron aping performance. So, how much power can the stock internals in Stuttgart’s 3.8-liter flat-6 take? Apparently, quite a lot.

The shop has recorded 850 horsepower and 727 lb-ft of torque on the rolling dyno, equating to over 1000 horsepower at the crank. Real world performance should be mind boggling, with the car reportedly reaching 60 miles-per-hour in the mid two second range, blowing through the 1/4 mile in just 9.79 seconds at 146 mph. Pricing looks to be just as fierce, with the Sledgehammer package retailing for $49,990. While that’s a lot of coin for a suite of bolt-ons, the performance would appear to speak for itself. Videos of both the dyno run and the 1/4 mile pass can be viewed after the jump as well as SPI’s official press release.

[Source: Switzer Performance Innovation]

Continue reading Tuner creates 1000-horsepower Porsche 911… with bolt-ons.

Tuner creates 1000-horsepower Porsche 911… with bolt-ons. originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Meta (about Joystiq)

You’re right, dear Reader. I’m NOT Ross. Why? Because Ross is busy geeketeering with the Engadget crew in Las Vegas. He’s probably very tired right now, and I think we should all send him our best wishes and hope he comes back soon … also, he’s on HQ cleaning duty next week, so seriously. Get back here.

• Alexander Sliwinski: Continuing with Prince of Persia. Getting in some Sins if I get the chance. I probably should grab some Fallout 3 time, because the longer I leave that game alone, the harder it is to get back in.
• Christopher Grant: I’ll pretend to be interested in other games, but will eventually return to Fable 2 … just waiting for the Knothole Island DLC to drop. If, by some chance, I can focus on any other game, it will probably be Prince of Persia and/or the last chunk of Mirror’s Edge. But, honestly … Fable 2.
  
• Griffin McElroy: Is stuck “offline” after his trusty 486DX2 finally broke down.
  
• Kevin Kelly: Fell asleep during the Activision press snoozer. Don’t worry, someone will kick him out soon.
• James Ransom-Wiley: Was planning to plod, co-operatively, through the Gears 2 campaign, until I found out my boy’s copy had been ripped from its GameFly sheath before it ever arrived in his mailbox. How you gonna do him like that, USPS?
• Jason Dobson: Sanity be damned, I’m going to finish Prinny for the PSP this weekend. Oh who am I kidding, I’m headed for a padded cell.
• Justin McElroy: Is at CES, playing with a Bluetooth-enabled Skype-phone Netbook digital picture frame. It’s this year’s must-have gadget!
• Ludwig Kietzmann: Has already played every game ever made, and will no doubt play through every Q4 release for the third (or fourth!) time, depending on game of course.
• Randy Nelson: Everyone’s at a trade show! My girlfriend is at — of all places — the Detroit Auto Show, so in her absence I’m going to brush up on my Rock Band 2 drumming skills in order to (perhaps) finally stand a chance against her when she gets home. I’ll also probably play lots of CoD4. She has great taste in games, but no appetite for hardcore FPSs.
• Ross Miller: I’m playing “how does this freaking DSLR work?” 28 hours in and I’ve earned just 1 of 20 Achievements so far: Accurately portray the Sony CES keynote for the crazy-awesome awkward mess it was.

WRUP: Wait, you’re not Ross edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Pegatron has been pretty quiet ever since it split off from ASUS to do ODM stuff all by its lonesome — which is sort of the idea, since Pegatron’s mainly doing the behind-the-scenes manufacturing. We’re glad, however, that the company peeked out of its shell to show off these new Freescale-based netbooks. The Linux-running laptops boast 8.9-inch screens, 8 hour battery life, 8GB of storage and projected retail prices around $199, while the nettop holds similar power in a pico-style form factor. Under the hood is Freescale’s brand new ARM i.MX515 processor, which is a 1GHz chip that’s described as basically being three times faster than the iPhone. The win here is that the chip draws very little power and generates very little heat, allowing Pegatron to squeeze impressive battery life out of a very thin form factor. Freescale is working with Ubuntu to prep an ARM-Linux distro, which will hit in May, and Adobe will have an ARM happy version of Flash 10 sometime this year. Supplementing the processor are chips for DSP, 2D, 3D and 720p acceleration, which switch on and off as needed — we saw the computer in action playing 720p video smoothly while drawing a mere 0.5 watts and not even feeling warm to the touch. The limitation here is obviously straight-up processing power — it’s not very impressive, and certainly slower than Intel’s Atom — but for running an optimized Linux build and surfing the web or watching a vid, Pegatron and Freescale might’ve just found a new portability sweetspot. They’re hoping to have an OEM pick these up around May or June sometime.

Filed under: Laptops

Pegatron and Freescale team for low-power, ultra-cheap netbooks and nettops originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Culture, MMO

Sony Online Entertainment held its annual CES press event this week and during the invite only event the MMO game publisher announced plans to work with Brady Games to publish a new hardcover book to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their flagship game Everquest.

During the event the cover for the hardcover book was displayed in public for the first time which features art from Donato Giancola. The final book will feature behind-the-scenes artwork on the development of the MMO franchise, interviews with the key people behind the game (including Sony Online head John Smedley who is standing to the right of the book cover image) and more. Brady Games is taking pre-orders for the book which will cost $49.99 and will be released later this year. This is just the start of celebrations that Sony Online will hold around the country this year for Everquest‘s 10th anniversary.

CES 2009: Everquest 10th anniversary book announced originally appeared on Big Download Blog on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Microsoft Xbox 360, RPGs

Star Ocean: The Last Hope dares to go against almost every Square Enix convention. The game is supposedly the last of the franchise, a final fantasy in the Star Ocean universe. The game is being exclusively developed for Xbox 360 and is aiming for an almost-simultaneous worldwide release.

And now, Square Enix is throwing away yet another long-running tradition: delays. Fans have become so accustomed to waiting, and Square Enix has the gall to release this game earlier than expected? Star Ocean: The Last Hope will now appear in the US on February 24th, a full week earlier than previously announced.

Square Enix, we’re warning you — we don’t trust your new ways. You stop making ambiguously gendered buckle-wearing heroes, and we won’t know you anymore!

Star Ocean: The Last Hope gets earlier release date originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Economy, Tokyo Motor Show, Hatchbacks, Honda, Rendered Speculation, Rumormill

Lost in the jeers following Honda’s move to cancel the NSX – a car it could probably sell based solely on its ridiculously wonderful exhaust note – is news that the Big H is planning an A-segment car for markets outside of Japan. Now that the microcar segment is what’s cooking, and the smart fortwo isn’t doing so bad on its American voyage, cars like the Toyota iQ, Volkswagen up!, and Hyundai i10 are getting lots of attention.

To keep the cost down, Honda is expected to stick to traditional materials and probably focus on packaging. The powerplant is rumored to be a 1.4- or 1.5-liter turbodiesel with anywhere from 60 hp to 100 hp. But before you get excited, this car isn’t automatically destined for America. Of course, none of this would-be Honda’s competitors are headed this way yet either, and until the microcar trend is firmly established in the US – either by smart or another vehicle – we wouldn’t advise holding your breath.

[Source: Paul Tan]

Rendered Speculation: Honda to create mini-hatch for emerging markets originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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