Valve readies Steam Box consoles

5 March 2013 Last updated at 16:09 ET By Leo Kelion Technology reporter

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Gabe Newell discusses Valve's Steam Box console plans with the BBC's Daniel Emery

Valve expects to offer prototypes of its upcoming video games console for testing within four months time.

The firm's chief executive Gabe Newell revealed the news to the BBC ahead of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) Games Awards.

Valve's online PC games store Steam has already proven highly popular and analysts suggest the console, called Steam Box, could have a big impact.

Mr Newell is being honoured with an Academy Fellowship at the event.

He was less forthcoming about whether his firm was actively working on new sequels to its hit science fiction franchises Half Life and Portal.

Portal 2 - a puzzle based game involving a prisoner trying to escape test chambers controlled by a homicidal computer - won best game and two other awards at last year's Baftas.

Steam Box

Valve's Steam platform - which promotes titles by other developers as well as its own - has over 50 million registered accounts with software for the Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.

Its upcoming Steam Box hardware is designed to make it easy to access the service via living room televisions posing a challenge to Nintendo's Wii U, the upcoming Sony PlayStation 4 and Microsoft's next Xbox.

"We're working with partners trying to nail down how fast we can make it," Mr Newell told the BBC.

"We'll be giving out some prototypes to customers to gauge their reactions, I guess, in the next three to four months.

"There are noise issues and heat issues and being able to [deal with] that while still offering a powerful enough gaming experience is the challenge in building it."

He added that his company had still to finalise how the console's controller would work as it continued to explore the possibility of including sensors to measure the gamers' body states.

"If you think of a game like Left For Dead - which was trying to put you into a sort of horror movie - if you don't change the experience of what the player is actually feeling then it stops being a horror game," Mr Newell explained.

"So you need to actually be able to directly measure how aroused the player is - what their heart rate is, things like that - in order to offer them a new experience each time they play."

Undeclared price

One industry analyst said Valve's effort to transform itself from a games creator to an online marketplace was impressive, but added that it was still too soon to know if the Steam Box would be a success.

"I don't have any doubt they will put forth an impressive machine and it's pretty clear that at launch they will have a significant games catalogue," said Lewis Ward from IDC.

"But the surrounding app ecosystem is unlikely to match other consoles which have Netflix, video conferencing tie-ins and other non-gaming aspects.

"And we still don't know the price - Valve will be unable to subsidise its console in the same way the other manufacturers do, so that remains a major unknown."

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Dishonored wins Best Game Bafta

5 March 2013 Last updated at 20:41 ET

Dishonored has been named Best Game at the 2013 British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) video games awards.

The first-person action title is set in a historic plague-ridden city in which the player uses special powers and swordplay to seek revenge on enemies.

Its developer Arkane Studios made a joke apology to Brits for the way it had spelt the game's name.

Journey - a PlayStation title lacking words and enemies - took five awards.

These included Online Multiplayer, Artistic Achievement, Game Design, Original Music and Audio Achievement.

It was created by Thatgamecompany - a seven-year-old studio founded by graduates from the University of Southern California. It involves travelling across a huge desert landscape and communicating with other players - connected via the internet - by making wordless musical chirps.

Other atypical titles also did well.

Continue reading the main story

Best Game: Dishonored

Online Multiplayer: Journey

Game Design: Journey

Artistic Achievement: Journey

Original Music: Journey

Audio Achievement: Journey

Mobile & Handheld: The Walking Dead

Story: The Walking Dead

Game Innovation: The Unfinished Swan

Debut Game: The Unfinished Swan

Action: Far Cry 3

British Game: The Room

Performer: Danny Wallace - Thomas Was Alone

Family: Lego Batman 2

Strategy: Xcom - Enemy Unknown

Ones to Watch: Kind of a Big Deal - Starcrossed

Online Browser: SongPop

Sports/Fitness: New Star Soccer

Fellowship: Gabe Newell

The Walking Dead - a spin-off from the zombie-themed television series - won two prizes: Story and Mobile & Handheld.

Players take decisions about how to interact with other characters within set time limits through a series of five episodes. The options they take have lasting consequences and many reviewers have noted its success at eliciting strong emotional reactions from players to some of the characters' fates.

The Unfinished Swan was the other title to take two prizes - Debut Game and Innovation. To play it gamers explore an unfinished world which initially has its details revealed by splattering ink blots from a magic paintbrush,

The Room took the British Game Award. It challenges players to solve puzzles in a 3D environment in order to reveal the secrets of a mysterious box. It was created by Guildford-based Fireproof Studios and had previously won Apple's 2012 iPad game of the year.

Kind of a Big Deal - the developer of Starcrossed - took the Ones To Watch award. The Windows Phone title was created during a nine-week-long games competition run by the University of Abertay in Dundee last summer.

In addition the chief executive of Valve - the creator of the influential science fiction games Half Life and Portal, as well as the Steam community and marketplace - was honoured with an Academy Fellowship, Bafta's highest accolade.

"On behalf of everyone at Valve, and all of the gamers who have gone with us on this adventure over the last few years - thank you very much," he said in a short acceptance speech.

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Samsung to acquire 3% stake in Sharp

6 March 2013 Last updated at 02:53 ET

Samsung Electronics has agreed a deal to buy a 3% stake in struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp for 10.4bn yen ($110m; £75m).

Sharp has been trying to restructure its operations amid mounting losses.

However, it has found it tough to raise money after its credit rating was cut to "junk" status last year.

Analysts said the investment from Samsung, the world's biggest TV maker, was likely to provide a boost to Sharp's efforts to revive its business.

"For Sharp, this is good news from all fronts," said Gerhard Fasol of Eurotechnology Japan in Tokyo.

"Not only can Samsung help Sharp smooth its production and operations, it can also become a key customer of Sharp's products, especially flat screens," he added.

His views were backed by a statement from the South Korean firm which said that the deal would help to "lay a firm foundation for Samsung to secure a steady supply of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels from diversified sources".

Earlier in the day, shares in Sharp had jumped following reports that such a deal was set to be announced.

Its shares rose as much as 17% to 350 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, before closing at 341 yen.

Difficult times

Continue reading the main story

Hon Hai tried to have a strong influence on the way in which Sharp is run, that was a major stumbling block. Samsung has managed to avoid such a deal breaker."

End Quote Gerhard Fasol Eurotechnology Japan

Sharp's fortunes, like that of other Japanese electronics makers, have been hurt by a decline in global demand and falling prices of TVs.

It has forecast a loss of 450bn yen for the year to 31 March 2013.

The firm has announced a series of measures, including cutting 5,000 jobs or just under 10% of its workforce, in an attempt to cut costs.

It has also been looking for potential investors to help with its revival plan. However, some of those deals have been tough to negotiate.

Last year, Sharp agreed a deal to sell a stake of about 10% to Taiwan's Hon Hai for $800m.

The deal was announced in March with the Taiwanese firm agreeing to pay Sharp 550 yen per share.

But Sharp's shares fell as much as 70% in the subsequent months and the deal has yet to be concluded.

Though Sharp shares have recovered some of those losses, they are still trading well below the 550 yen mark and there are concerns that the deal may not happen at all.

There have also been reports that Hon Hai has asked for a seat on Sharp's board of directors in exchange for the investment, something that the Japanese firm is not seen as too keen to accept.

Meanwhile, Samsung has stated that it will have "no involvement in Sharp's business management in any way or form".

Analysts said that the South Korean firm's decision not to ask for a greater say in Sharp's day-to-day operations had played a key role in securing this deal.

"Hon Hai tried to have a strong influence on the way in which Sharp is run, that was a major stumbling block," said Mr Fasol of Eurotechnology Japan.

"Samsung has managed to avoid such a deal breaker."

Late last year, there were also reports of chipmaker Intel being keen to invest as much as 40bn yen in Sharp.

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EU fines Microsoft over web browser

6 March 2013 Last updated at 07:02 ET

Microsoft has been fined 561m euros ($731m; £484m) for failing to promote a range of web browsers, rather than just Internet Explorer, to users in the European Union (EU).

It introduced a Browser Choice Screen pop-up in March 2010 as part of a settlement following an earlier EU competition investigation.

But the US company dropped the feature in a Windows 7 update in February 2011.

Microsoft said the omission had been the result of a "technical error".

But competition commissioner Joaquin Almunia said the action was unprecedented, adding he wanted to deter any company from the "temptation" of reneging on such a promise.

In theory the watchdog could have fined the firm 10% of its global annual revenue, which would have totalled $7.4bn based on its 2012 report.

"We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologised for it," a spokesman for Microsoft said following the announcement.

"We provided the Commission with a complete and candid assessment of the situation, and we have taken steps to strengthen our software development and other processes to help avoid this mistake - or anything similar - in the future."

One lawyer said the ruling was also intended to send out a message to others.

"The European Commission is sending a firm signal in this first case of its type that it will not tolerate failure by a company to comply with the commitments it gave to settle an antitrust infringement procedure," said Tony Woodgate from Simmons & Simmons.

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Joaquin Almunia, vice-president of the European Commission, announced the fine

"These 'commitments decisions' are currently the European Commission's favoured mechanism to close abuse of dominance proceedings, saving enforcement resource and allowing for a speedy resolution."

Browser 'oversight'

The case dates back to 2007 when Opera - a Norwegian web-browser maker - complained Microsoft was stifling competition on PCs by bundling Internet Explorer with its operating system.

Microsoft initially argued that the move benefited users, but after the European Commission issued a preliminary report suggesting the firm had abused its position, the company agreed to offer a choice of browser until at least 2014 to avoid risking a fine.

However, this option was missing from its Windows 7 Service Pack 1 released in 2011 and it continued to be absent for 14 months.

During that time, Microsoft reported it was still complying with the agreement.

After the EU was alerted to the problem, it contacted Microsoft, which subsequently issued an apology suggesting its engineers had accidentally missed the issue.

It also acted to restore the facility. But the move was not enough to prevent an eight-month follow-up investigation by the commission into what punishment was needed.

Warning to others

At a press conference in Brussels, Mr Almunia said Microsoft's lack of compliance represented a "serious breach" and was the first time a firm had failed to meet such a commitment.

He explained that he preferred negotiated settlements, rather than extended legal battles, when tackling competition complaints in the fast moving IT sector.

But he added that Microsoft's willingness to co-operate with the EU's subsequent investigation had acted as a mitigating factor when determining the level of the fine.

"I hope this will make companies think twice before they ever thinking of breaching their international obligations," said the commissioner.

Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer and the former head of its Windows division Steven Sinofsky have already had their most recent bonuses docked, in part because of the browser affair.

Opera told the BBC it was "happy to see that the Commission is enforcing compliance with the commitment, which is critical to ensuring a genuine choice among web browsers for consumers".

However, one industry watcher suggested there were still unresolved issues,

"While it's highly likely that it was a technical mistake that broke the browser choice facility the fact that it remained broken for 14 months raises significant questions about Microsoft's ability and willingness to comply with the voluntary agreement with the EU," said Chris Green, principal analyst at the consultants Davies Murphy Group Europe.

"At the same time the situation also raises concerns over the EU's ability to actually monitor the outcomes of antitrust agreements."

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Murdoch group offers school tablet

6 March 2013 Last updated at 08:11 ET

A new tablet for schools has been unveiled by Rupert Murdoch's education group Amplify, reigniting the debate about how children will learn in future.

The $299 (£198) Android device includes learning programs for pupils as well as tools for teachers, allowing them to monitor progress and attendance.

The preloaded software includes content such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The wi-fi enabled tablet, aimed at the US market, faces stiff competition.

Remote control

News Corp's education unit, along with firms such as Apple and Pearson, is betting on a technology-led educational future and is digitising traditional textbooks and redesigning them for children who have grown up using multimedia devices.

Both parents and teachers will be able to access the educational data collected on the tablets.

For parents it will mean they can see how their child is progressing while teachers will be able to create instant chatrooms for class discussions, keep an eye on who is using tablets for playing games rather than working and take over all the screens in the classroom if necessary.

A slightly more expensive tablet with access to 4G - costing $349 - has been designed for children working from home. The preloaded curriculum will cost $99 for a two-year subscription.

While education experts believe that tablet-led education is likely to become the norm in classrooms, not everyone thinks proprietary systems will be the best way forward.

'Daft' idea

"Everyone wants to offer proprietary software that will lock education into their system and that just isn't going to happen," said Prof Stephen Heppell, a digital education expert at Bournemouth University.

"The rhetoric in schools now is about bringing your own device. If you have a child with a cutting-edge iPad why say, 'You can't bring that, you have to use this under-powered device we provide'?

"It is as daft as having identical haircuts."

US-based research group The Pew Internet Research Center has suggested that the gulf between children with access to smartphones and tablets and those without is getting larger.

Prof Heppell said his research indicated that there was no need to provide one device for every pupil.

"Tablets mean children collaborate better," he explained.

"With a laptop there is one driver and the others are passengers but tablets can be shared between a group of children."

For him the real reason to replace textbooks with tablets in the classroom is that such devices can be used to create, rather than just consume, content.

"I've seen really young kids shooting and editing movies in a way that five years ago would have got them a GCSE," he said.

In the UK, the Essa Academy in Bolton has already taken the radical decision to provide all pupils and teachers with iPads.

It says this has helped students and cut costs, including reducing the schools £80,000 photocopying bill to just £15,000 a year.

The Amplify tablet will be officially unveiled at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.

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Volvo unveils cyclist alert system

6 March 2013 Last updated at 11:20 ET

Volvo has announced it is releasing a cyclist detection facility which should prevent fatal accidents.

The auto firm says vehicles fitted with the system will be able to detect threats including a cyclist suddenly swerving out into a car's path.

It said that if a collision risk was detected an alarm would sound and the car's brakes would be fully deployed.

However, safety campaigners say the tech is no replacement for caution behind the wheel.

The Chinese-owned company introduced the feature at the Geneva Motor Show.

No upgrades

The technology is an enhanced version of Volvo's pedestrian detection system which it launched in 2010.

Like the earlier release the innovation uses a radar in the car's grille and a camera located between its windscreen and back view mirror to detect collision threats.

The code which acts as the brains for the equipment has been rewritten to add the new feature, and its added complexity has meant a more powerful processor is now needed.

As a consequence Volvo cars fitted with prior versions of the product cannot simply install a software upgrade.

The firm added that the new system also needed to be installed while cars were being built in the factory - meaning it would have to be ordered up front - and it would be limited to seven out of 11 models in the company's current line-up.

Motorists wanting the feature face an added bill of at least £1,850 to buy it as a part of a package of added features.

Horse alerts

A Volvo Car UK spokesman told the BBC that the firm's engineers were now working on a fresh version as part of its 2020 programme which would also detect animals.

They have already spent an evening at a safari park where they laid out dried food to attract the creatures which they filmed to study their various behaviours.

"The aim is to avoid collisions with horses and deer for example," said Chris Mullord. "But there's no firm release date yet."

This is not the firm's only effort to protect people outside its vehicles from accidents. In May it will release its first car fitted with an airbag beneath its bonnet which will inflate if sensors in the front bumper detect they have come into contact with a cyclist or pedestrian.

The airbag covers approximately a third of the windscreen and is designed to minimise injury to the victim's head.

According to the UK's Department for Transport, 6,040 pedestrians, 3,270 cyclists and 5,440 motorcyclists were killed or seriously injured on the UK's roads between October 2011 and September 2012.

It said the figures for each category had increased by between 4-8% over the previous year.

British Cycling - the UK's governing body for cycling - said it appreciated Volvo's efforts, but added that they only addressed part of the problem.

"While we obviously welcome any safety measures that can be built into vehicles, people shouldn't be relying on technology to keep them and other road users safe," said a spokeswoman.

"What would make much more of a difference is making cyclist awareness a mandatory part of the driving test. British Cycling will continue to campaign for this as well as the establishment of a prominent, national cyclist awareness campaign similar to that we've seen for motorcyclists."

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Kim Dotcom 'can sue NZ spy agency'

7 March 2013 Last updated at 01:07 ET

A court in New Zealand has ruled that Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom can sue the country's foreign intelligence service for illegally spying on him.

The court rejected a challenge to an earlier ruling allowing him to sue the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) over his treatment.

GCSB worked with US officials to investigate Mr Dotcom over allegations of online piracy and money laundering.

Mr Dotcom, who denied the charges, is fighting extradition to the US.

US officials allege that pirated movies and other content shared through his Megaupload site cost copyright holders more than $500m (£322m) in lost earnings, making it one of the biggest cases of its kind.

He faces a jail sentence of up to 20 years if convicted in the US.

Mr Dotcom's home and the offices of Megaupload were raided in January 2012 as part of the FBI investigation. The GCSB was asked to spy on Mr Dotcom by police prior to the raid.

The agency is only allowed to spy on those with no right to reside in New Zealand. The case prompted an apology from Prime Minister John Key to Mr Dotcom - a German national with New Zealand residency - last year.

The New Zealand attorney general had asked the appeals court to exclude the GCSB from Mr Dotcom's lawsuit seeking compensation, after the high court ruled last year that the agency could be held liable for illegally spying, but the court rejected the bid.

The appeals court also said Mr Dotcom could access some GCSB evidence related to his case.

"This will strengthen our case in so far as GCSB remains a party to the proceedings," William Akel, a lawyer for Mr Dotcom, said.

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Record complaints on phone insurance

By Dan Whitworth
Newsbeat reporter Kim wasn't happy after getting a second hand replacement phone

A record number of complaints are being made about mobile phone insurance.

The Financial Ombudsman Service says it dealt with around 600 between April 2011 and 2012 and upheld 69%.

But it is expecting a 25% increase on that figure when the numbers for the current financial year are gathered at the end of this month.

However, it says those complaints are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to people unhappy with their insurance provider.

Twenty-three-year-old Kim Martin from Thetford says her phone is lifeline for her: "I plan my days by calling people I need to, emailing people, keeping in the loop with all my friends and friendly.

"Basically I use it for everything."

'Scratched' replacement

After accidentally ruining her phone when a bottle of fruit juice leaked in her bag, she didn't get the service she was expecting.

Continue reading the main story

I've paid them £720 in total, plus my £50 excess, so really I don't know how they couldn't afford to give me a brand new phone

Kim Martin

She was sent a refurbished phone to replace the new one that had been broken.

"The silver was peeling off the edges of it," she said. "It's scratched in a few places and was marked and that's how it came.

"I could tell it was second hand as soon as I took the wrapper off. But it worked pretty well to start off with so I was happy with that.

"[But now] it's freezing, it doesn't charge properly, the battery runs out really quickly, it turns itself off now and again, it doesn't pick up signal. The list is endless really."

Martyn James form the Financial Ombudsman Service said: "We uphold more complaints about mobile phone insurance than virtually any other product we look at.

"It's round about three-quarters of all the cases we see."

The Association of British Insurers says the complaints only represent a tiny percentage of people who have mobile phone insurance and that it's working hard to bring that number down.

That's not good enough for Kim who, as well as a £26 monthly contract, pays £12 to her bank for mobile phone insurance every month.

"I've paid them £720 in total, plus my £50 excess, so really I don't know how they couldn't afford to give me a brand new phone."

Follow @BBCNewsbeat on Twitter

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Frozen phones give up data secrets

7 March 2013 Last updated at 05:59 ET

Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents, German security researchers have found.

The team froze phones for an hour as a way to get around the encryption system that protects the data on a phone by scrambling it.

Google introduced the data scrambling system with the version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

The attack allowed the researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos.

Cold start

Android's data scrambling system was good for end users but a "nightmare" for law enforcement and forensics workers, the team at Erlangen's Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) wrote in a blogpost about their work.

To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.

The trio discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost - Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones.

The Frost software helped them copy data on a phone that could then be analysed on a separate computer.

A chilled phone also helped their hacking project. Data fades from memory much more slowly when chips are cold which allowed them to grab the encryption keys and speed up unscrambling the contents of a phone.

PhD student Tilo Muller told the BBC that the attack generally gave them access to data that had been put in memory as users browsed websites, sent messages or shared pictures.

The researchers tested their attack against a Samsung Galaxy Nexus handset as it was one of the first to use Android's disk encryption system. However, they said, other phones were just as likely to be vulnerable to the attack. The team are planning further tests on other Android handsets.

While the "cold boot" attack had been tried on desktop PCs and laptops, Mr Muller said the trio were the first to try it on phones.

"We thought it would work because smartphones are really small PCs," he said. "but we were quite excited that the trick with the freezer worked so well."

The German research group is now working on defences against the attack that ensures encryption keys are never put in vulnerable memory chips. Instead they are only used in the memory directly attached to a phone's processor.

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Quick success for Planescape reboot

7 March 2013 Last updated at 08:14 ET

A project to make a "spiritual sequel" to classic video game Planescape: Torment has taken six hours to hit its funding goal on Kickstarter.

Torment: Tides of Numenera launched on 6 March seeking $900,000 (£600,000) to make a follow-up to the original game.

The project reached its initial cash target soon after launch and now more than $1.6m (£1m) has been pledged to the game, on the crowd-funding website.

The game is scheduled to be released in December 2014.

Released in 1999 by Black Isle Studios , Planescape: Torment was a single-player video game that, since its debut, has been lauded as a classic of story-led gaming.

It lets players take on the role of a character called The Nameless One who journeys through the strange city of Sigil, gradually re-discovering who he is.

The game was not a financial success but has won many fans since as word about its complexity and characters has spread.

Some of the designers of Planescape game have signed on to help create Tides of Numenera, as have other developers and artists involved with the original.

It also has the blessing of Chris Avellone, lead designer of Planescape: Torment.

In the description on Kickstarter, the team behind Numenera said the game would be set in a different world but would aim to emulate the "deep, thematically satisfying story" of the first game.

It would be less about combat and more about interaction with characters in the game.

Writing on the Rock, Paper, Shotgun games news site Alec Meer said it was always likely that the game would be funded given the amount of "backlogged adoration" for Planescape.

However, he was surprised it hit its funding target so swiftly despite there being no in-game footage available nor any direct involvement of original designer Chris Avellone.

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