New Games from Electronic Arts

Another cool thing about going to CES is being able to see all the latest games before they hit store shelves. This year, Electronic Arts (best known for the Sims series of games) was at the convention, showing off a number of their upcoming games. Here were two of my favorites.

The Sims 3

The next entry in the popular simulation series is on its way to the PC, and it looks great. Creating a Sim is now more fun than ever. In addition to getting to choose how your Sim looks, you also get to pick out different traits for them. These traits range from the normal (“flirty” or “non-flirty”) to the outrageous (“kleptomaniac” or just downright “evil”). These all contribute to what your Sim wants to do with their life, leading up to a lifetime goal that he/she wants to achieve within their virtual lifetime. Along the way there are much smaller goals with a much smaller impact. But they can be just as silly as some of the traits. For example, if your character is evil, one of his or her goals might be “Taking Candy from a Baby.”

And for the creative people, The Sims 3 makes it really easy for you to make your own movies. Whenever you want to capture a scene, you just hit the record button and it will record everything happening on your screen. You can then choose to upload it to the Internet, or you can edit it on your computer and make a cool movie.

The Sims 3 does not yet have a release date or a price.

Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure

One of my favorite games that EA was showing was Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, for the Nintendo DS. This game tells the story of Henry Hatsworth, the number one adventurer in the Pompous Adventurer’s Club, who is attempting to uncover a mystical artifact – the Magical Golden Suit. The game truly is, as the title suggests, a “puzzling adventure.” On the top screen is a traditional adventure game, where Henry wanders around five different worlds fighting enemies. But on the bottom screen is a puzzle game where you use the stylus to line up three blocks in a row.

 

The two screens interact in different ways. For example, an enemy that you defeat on the top screen will come back to haunt you on the bottom screen. And lining up special bricks on the bottom screen will give Henry a boost – the coolest of which is “Tea Time.” When you unlock Tea Time, Henry turns into an indestructible robot that can easily rampage through the level.  looks to be not only a fun game, but also one with a very clever sense of humor.

Knock-Offs at CES

While the Consumer Electronics Show is, for the most part, home to the newest and most original gadgets, not everyone is unique. In fact, there are many companies who create clones, or knock-offs, of already popular products. This was best seen in the Gaming Showcase, where some of the most popular games were facing some almost identical competition.

For example, you’ve probably played Guitar Hero or Rock Band, but you probably haven’t even heard of the ElectroStar Riff-Rocker. Instead of the full size plastic guitar that comes with the other two, the Riff-Rocker guitar is the size of your palm, and plugs into your computer via USB. When you plug it in, you can open up a program that looks exactly the same as Rock Band, except with only one instrument, the guitar. It’s a little bit difficult to play because of how small it is (I couldn’t believe my ears when the press representative said that real guitarists preferred it because it was more realistic), but other than that it is a spot-on copy of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

Another popular thing to copy was the Nintendo Wii. The Gaming Showcase was filled with similarly shaped white boxes designed to look like the Wii. Although some of the games looked pretty good, most of them looked like they had been developed for a console well over a decade old. But there was still some considerable interest in the knock-offs – some of them actually had people waiting in line so they could try “Vii Sports” or “Super Tennis.”

The Three Screens in Your Life

By Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder

Before the official kickoff of the International Consumer Electronics show on Thursday, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer gave the keynote speech of the technology extravaganza. A keynote speech lays out the main idea of a particluar meeting or policy.

As soon as Ballmer got on stage, he tried to make one thing clear – although the recession is a pressing problem, it wasn’t going to keep Microsoft from doing what they have always done. “Today, our world, our nation, and our industry are facing some challenges… the impact will be with us for quite a while.” But, he said, not matter how long the recession lasted, “our digital lives will only get richer.”

Convergence of the Three Screens

Ballmer then began talking about the three screens in most households that were starting to become one – the computer, the mobile phone, and the TV. For the computer, he started by showing off some of the cool features in the new upcoming version of Windows (which has a free public beta, or tryout period, starting Friday). Windows Version 7 can learn your habits, making the computer/TV/phone experience just for you, and easier to use. There are also a lot of features that make it easy to share your files and music with other people in the house.

Windows is also available for some cell phones, and it has some new features as well. Now you can watch YouTube videos on the go, and you can show your friends videos without having to be at your computer. If you have an account on the Windows website, then you can access it both from your computer and from your phone.

Entertainment

The third screen is the TV, which is part of one of Microsoft’s biggest industries; their entertainment division – the one behind the Xbox. They had a lot of exciting announcements for entertainment. The popular Halo series will be coming out with the first T-rated game in the series, Halo Wars, which offers a new type of strategic gameplay. Halo Wars is set to release on February 28th, and there will be a demo out on February 5th.

For people who want an entirely new experience, Xbox Live will now have live game shows that you can participate in from your TV screen. This spring, they will be launching a game version of 1 vs. 100, and you can compete against people from all over the world who have an Xbox.

Make Your Own Game with Kodu

And if you ever get tired of playing games that other people have made, then you can use the new Kodu Game Creator to easily program your own games. A twelve-year-old girl named Sparrow came on stage to show how easy it was to make your own game using Kodu. All you have to do is put a character on the screen, and tell it what it should do when something happens. For example, you can tell the character that if it sees an object, to either chase after it or run away.

At the end of the keynote, Steve Ballmer reiterated what he had said at the beginning of the speech. There were three screens in most households, the PC, the phone, and the TV. Microsoft is in the process of unifying these platforms into one using the internet.  Soon, you’ll be able to access the information that you need from wherever you need it.

(Image: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Photo courtesy Aaron Broder.)

Mod with "The Woz"

 By Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder

At Macworld today, a company called Axiotron announced the Modbook Pro, a more powerful, redesigned version of the Modbook. The original Modbook is a modified Macbook computer with a touch screen and no keyboard, that allows users to draw, sketch and write directly on the screen.

Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computers and a legend in the “Macworld” community was the very special guest presenter.

The “Woz” as many call him, showed off some of the new capabilities that were available on both Modbooks, including a way to control what the computer does just by writing on the screen what you want it to do.

For example, if you write “red screen”, then the background wallpaper turns red. He showed some of the other uses of the touch screen, and after the presentation, was very friendly as everyone crowded around to get a picture or signature from “the Woz”.

Learn more about the Modbook here.

Photo: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Aaron Broder. Photo courtesy Aaron Broder.

Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder is bringing you the latest on digital music and movies, television, electronics, and even robots from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld this week.

Straight Out of Zimbabwe

By Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a bus full of multimedia technology that travels around the country giving kids the opportunity to make their own music, and music videos. John Lennon was a member of the legendary band The Beatles.

Last year they launched a brand new bus, with the latest technology. This year, they are part of another effort – Liyanna.

Liyanna is a band from Zimbabwe made up of eight band members from 17 years old to 23 years old. What makes them so unique is that all of them were born with a severe disability. Proper medical care for people with disabilities is scarce in Zimbabwe.

However, with the help of the John Lennon bus, they will be touring the United States during January, performing in places like Disney Land and the House of Blues. They will also be traveling in the bus, helping high school students across the country create their own songs.

“We enjoy playing music because while we are giving people music, we enjoy it at the same time,” said the band’s percussionist Goodwell Nzou. “We come to meet many people as we do music, and we make friends each and every time.”

Later this year there will be an HBO documentary about Liyanna entitled “Ithemba”. Just type “Liyanna” into www.google.com and you’ll find clips of their music.

Photo: Members of the band Liyanna with Aaron Broder. Photo courtesy Aaron Broder.

Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder is bringing you the latest on digital music and movies, television, electronics, and even robots from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld this week.

Make Your Own Music, Movies and More!

By Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder

At today’s MacWorld keynote address, Philip Schiller, a senior vice president at Apple, announced a new version of the popular creative tools for Mac computers, iLife.

iLife is made up of a number of different programs.iMovie, Garageband, and iPhoto, got major upgrades for 2009.

iMovie ’09 keeps the moviemaking process simple: all you have to do is take the videos you want and drag them into the window in order. There are also some really cool effects that you can add to your movie, like making it move in slow motion, or maps that show you as you travel from one place to another.

Garageband is Apple’s audio editing software. It has a great new feature called “Learn to Play,” where an on-screen instructor can teach you how to play guitar and keyboard.

Once you’ve mastered the basics of the guitar or keyboard, you can then move on to learning actual songs, with stars like Fall Out Boy, John Fogerty, and Sting teaching you some of their songs. You can get the Artist Lessons through Garageband for $4.99 each, and they will feature the song itself, the story behind the song, and a lot more.

iPhoto, meanwhile, offers two whole new ways to organize your photos, by the faces of the people, and by the places they were taken.

In iPhoto's Places, when you assign a picture a location, it will appear as a pin on a map of the world, and you can see the distribution of all your pictures. In Faces, iPhoto will automatically recognize where in a picture the face appears, and then you can assign it a name. iPhoto will then try its best to find that person in any of the pictures in your library.

The new iLife ’09 suite will be released later this month for $79, or $99 for a family pack of five licenses. You can read more about it on the Apple website at http://www.apple.com/ilife/.

Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder is bringing you the latest on digital music and movies, television, electronics, and even robots from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld this week.

Mac Mania

Do you use a Mac computer? You may not know it, but Apple computers and software have a whole conference all to themselves called MacWorld, and for over a decade, the Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been giving a keynote speech there.

However, this year marks the end of an era. Not only will Steve Jobs not be delivering the keynote tomorrow morning, but this will also be the last year Apple will even participate in the expo. That makes some people want to be extra sure they get to see the keynote – like 14-year-old Nicholas Lensander.

Lensander was the first person in line, arriving at the Moscone Center at 6:30 a.m. today to make sure he got to see the keynote that wouldn’t take place until over 24 hours later. He says it’s worth it though. “It’s a little frustrating [that Steve Jobs won’t be giving the keynote], but this is their last time at the show, so I think they have to go out with a bang.” He hopes to see something that nobody has ever thought of before.

Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder is bringing you the latest on digital music and movies, television, electronics, and even robots from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and MacWorld this week.

What's Next for Tech?

Scholastic Kid Reporter Aaron Broder will bring you the latest on digital music and movies, television, electronics, and even robots from the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas beginning January 8, 2009.

Aaron covered CES for Scholastic News Online in 2007 and 2008. He will be blogging about cutting edge technology and bringing you first-hand interviews with some of the leaders in the electronics industry.