Gran Turismo 6 will hit the PS3 this holiday season, Sony has confirmed, with the hotly-anticipated game offering 1,200 different cars and 33 different locations. The game will introduce seven new locations, in fact, with 71 different layouts, 19 of which are new. Further cars and tracks will also be released online, studio Polyphony confirmed,
Tag Archives: Holiday
Gran Turismo 6 for PS3 confirmed for holiday 2013 release
Thanks To Poor Holiday Sales, B&N Will Give Away A Free Nook Simple Touch With Every Purchase Of A Nook HD+
There’s been nothing but bad news coming from Barnes & Noble lately, and it seems as though the company has decided to resort to the desperate measure of giving away Nooks for free. Reuters is reporting that customers who purchase the $ 269 Nook HD+ will receive a $ 79 Simple Touch free of charge as a limited offer. It’s a great deal if you’ve been looking for both a tablet and an ebook reader, but I can’t help but feel a little sad that this is what it’s come down to. Nooks have always been solidly designed products, it’s just that they were never able to catch on with consumers after being doubly sucker punched by the iPad and the Kindle. In January, Barnes & Noble revealed its plans to close nearly 20 of its retail locations over the next decade, which was followed by news last month that Nook revenue had dropped 26 percent YOY.
TechCrunch
HTC Q4 profit, sales plunge amid holiday crush
Not even a flagship smartphone at Verizon Wireless could help its results, which continue their downward trajectory. [Read more]![]()
CNET News
Steam extending holiday sale with “encore weekend”
We’re closing in on the end of the Steam holiday sale, sadly. The deals can’t last forever, but in a moment of sheer awesomeness, Valve has decided that it wants them to last just a little bit longer than originally announced. While the sale was supposed to wind down officially on January 5 (which is
Engadget’s 2012 holiday giveaway: last chance to win an AT&T smartphone!
The new year is upon us, and that means our holiday 2012 giveaway is about to wrap up. If you haven’t stopped by our gift guides and left a comment on each to win one of 14 AT&T smartphones, well, you might want to think about doing that now. We’re accepting entries till today, December 31st, at 11:59 PM EST — so get on it!
Filed under: Announcements
The 404 Holiday 2012: Year in entertainment (podcast)
The 404 buddy Zach comes prepared for this special 404 Yuletide episode with a bunch of lists to wrap up the best (and worst) music, TV, and movies of the year. [Read more]![]()
CNET News
A Holiday Gift From Gapingvoid: “I’m Not Delusional, I’m An Entrepreneur”
Gapingvoid’s unique style of visual communication has long been popular among successful and aspiring entrepreneurs. They decorate their offices with prints of gapingvoid art. They wear our t-shirts. They read our blog and newsletter. We admire and appreciate all entrepreneurs – they are the future – and we salute them (and you) with this short look at entrepreneurship told through a series of cartoons.
TechCrunch
Engadget Eurocast 010 – 12.25.12 Holiday Special
Christmas day, and while the US is still tucked up in bed, awaiting Santa’s visit, the euro-crew are already up and about, donning knitted jumpers with one hand in the chocolate tin, the other brandishing (the third) sherry. This year, to save you from tears, we recorded you something special. Merry Christmas from the Eurocast.
Hosts: Dan Cooper, Steve Dent, Mat Smith, Sharif Sakr, James Trew, Jamie Rigg
Producer: James Trew
Hear the Podcast
Continue reading Engadget Eurocast 010 – 12.25.12 Holiday Special
Filed under: Podcasts
A Hackathon Ushers In A Holiday Version Of Changemakrs, The Platform For Inspirational Quotes
Changemakrs, a platform for sharing inspiration built by an ex-Facebooker, is tapping into the Christmas spirit with a version of the site that lets anyone share holiday quotes. If you sign into the site, Changemakrs will automatically add holiday quotes to the homepage, using some natural-language processing algorithms that categorize the quotes. They also do quality filtering through internal user rankings. This holiday version of the site was hacked together in a few hours. The site has picked up holiday quotes from Bon Jovi, the movies “Miracle on 34th Street,” and “Elf,” and Charles Dickens. Changemakrs is a platform where anyone can post and share inspirational quotes. It was born out of some experimentation by a former Facebook business development manager Sacha Tueni and his co-founder Mathias Wagner. After working on a Twitter client (yes, a Twitter client) for a couple months, they built a tribute site to Steve Jobs that overlaid his best advice on top of stark, black-and-white photos of him. The barebones site quickly went viral, accumulating 3 million pageviews in about 48 hours. They then repeated that approach with many other famous figures like Albert Einstein and Lady Gaga, with similar results. They then turned it into an open site where anyone could share or accumulate bits and pieces of aspirational wisdom. The site came out of beta earlier this month. Yes, it is a bit of brain-dead, simple concept, and strangely, web-focused in a mobile-first world. But the team says that while there are plenty of quote sites across the web, these competitors are outdated with Craigslist-era design. Plus, they’re not designed to be particularly social or viral. Tueni, who used to work at Facebook, has been involved in social change-oriented projects before. Before he joined Facebook, he built a mobile service that let Lebanese voters report election irregularities with their feature phones. Changemakrs is currently bootstrapped for now.
TechCrunch
Google, Apple show off tech in holiday ads
Technology giants Google and Apple shared some holiday cheer and a little self-promotion online in the form of ads recently posted on YouTube.
Computerworld News
AppSales for Android keeps track of all the holiday app deals
Thanks to the holidays, tons of Android apps are going on sale, some of which are already on sale, but you’re probably frustrated at how you can’t keep up with all of the good deals at once, especially since some deals only last for 24 hours or so. However, a deal-aggregation app called AppSales looks
Holiday E-Commerce Sales Up 13 Percent To $34B; This Past Week Was Heaviest Online Shopping Period On Record
comSocre just released its holiday e-commerce numbers for the week, and according to the report this past week was the heaviest five-day online shopping period on record. So far, retail e-commerce spending for the first 44 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season was $ 33.8 billion up 13 percent.
GOG holiday sale kicks off with deals on The Witcher 2, Torchlight
Online holiday spending in the US is close to $27 billion so far
It appears that this year the economy in the United States has made a turnaround. Last year, shopping during the holiday shopping season was down compared to other years. This year holiday shopping is turning around and according to comScore online spending has now approached $ 27 billion for the first 37 days of the November-December
Verizon Selects brings targeted ads to VZ wireless customers, induces more holiday shopping
We’ve grown accustomed to the creepily context-aware ads in our Gmail inboxes and we’ve seen targeted ads come to game consoles and printers, so naturally, it’s no surprise Verizon’s bringing such advertising to its mobile customers. Called Verizon Selects, it’s a program rolling out to some Big Red patrons, who, should they choose to opt in, will receive tailored offers and marketing messages on their phones.
It works by using myriad user info, including location, web browsing and mobile app usage data “to create specific insights” — i.e. VZW figures out where you go and what you like in order to shoot you appropriate ads. In order to get folks with the program, Verizon will offer those who opt in a coupon or “some other form of reward,” and the company is assuaging privacy fears by allowing users to control their privacy choices on the Verizon Selects website. What say you, dear readers — will you be opting into Big Red’s new mobile marketing scheme? Sound off in the comments below.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Verizon
Via: Slashgear
Source: Verizon Wireless
Xbox 360 Nike+ Kinect Training Bundle prepares you for holiday feasting
Microsoft has revealed a new Xbox 360 package, the Nike+ Kinect Training Bundle, complete with a console, Kinect sensor bar, and a copy of the Nike+ Kinect Training game. The set – which also includes a month’s Xbox LIVE Gold membership, to whet your appetite – is priced at $ 249.99 after a $ 50 discount holiday
Engadget’s holiday gift guide 2012: portable audio
Welcome to the Engadget holiday gift guide! Picking presents for friends and loved ones is never a simple task, and with thousands of options for each category, buying technology can be an especially frustrating experience. We’re here to help. Below you’ll find today’s bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to our hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the holiday season. And don’t forget to enter our giveaway — leave a comment for a chance to nab AT&T’s HTC Windows Phone 8X.
If you plan on picking up smartphones, tablets or laptops for you and your loved ones this holiday season, it’s safe to bet most of them won’t produce decent sound quality when left to their built-in devices. That’s why we’re here to highlight some portable audio wares that should help you jam out at home and on the go with pleasing sonic fidelity. We’ve narrowed it down to wired headphones, wireless headphones and wireless speakers that blend style, portability and, of course, quality to please many an audiophile.
Continue reading Engadget’s holiday gift guide 2012: portable audio
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video
As Retail E-Commerce Sees Three Billion Dollar-Plus Days In The Past Week, Online Holiday Sales Jump 15 Percent To $20.4B
We’ve been wowed by the record breaking Black Friday and Cyber Monday spending data, but it looks like consumers are continuing to spend online for holiday shopping. comScore says that retail e-commerce spending for the first 30 days of the November–December 2012 holiday season amounts to $ 20.4 billion, which is a 15 percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.
TechCrunch
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Laptops
Buying a laptop at Christmas is a big-ticket gift, but there are some great options out there if you’ve promised portable computing to someone special. Plenty of people – whether teenagers, students, or parents – are hoping for a notebook in giftwrap this month, and we’ve picked out some of the best to help make
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Tablets
Tablets will be the must-have gift of 2012, the trend-watchers tell us, but that means a whole lot of slates competing for your dollar. This year has seen Apple raise its game with a second size option, while Android has evolved into a legitimate alternative, and Microsoft has made its own play for the market
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Oddities
For those little gadgets and gizmos we got an extra amount of play out of, we’ve got this little Oddities section. This section has truly strange stuff some years, and other years its full of products like the fabulous sports and health-oriented smart bracelet Jawbone UP – winners all! For the file sharer out there,
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Smartphones
In the smartphone universe you’re going to have some sorting to do starting with the carrier your gift receiver is working with. More than likely you’re a parent or a significant other if you’re purchasing a smartphone on-contract for that special someone, this meaning you’ve got a fair understanding of which carrier they’ll be working
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Accessories
We’ve got an odd assortment of accessories for you to peek at here, most of them being cases and protections of different sorts for some of the more popular devices on the market – but there are some weird bits as well. It’s really difficult to go entirely wrong with accessories for your gift-getting-buddies as
SlashGear 2012 Holiday Gift Guide: Audio Equipment
There are three different ways you’re going it give the gift of audio this holiday season, the first being the massive amount of smart devices out there with their own external speaker – so many do these days that it’s taken for granted – see: all of the smartphones, notebooks, and tablets we’ve worked with
Variable iTunes gift cards hit retailers just in time for holiday shopping
Instead of combing through the gift card aisle for just the right iTunes denomination, you’ll soon be able to get one of these newly released variable gift cards instead. Just bring the card to the cashier, pick an amount between $ 15 and $ 500, and it’ll get validated for that amount. The Cupertino company has offered variable pricing for regular Apple Store gift cards for awhile now, but iTunes cards had previously only been available in $ 15, $ 25, $ 50 and $ 100 options. These cards should also be compatible with an iTunes 11 feature that lets you redeem gift cards by scanning the code with your computer’s camera. We’re not sure which third-party retailers are offering these just yet, but it sounds like a decent last-minute impulse gift for your iOS-loving pals.
Source: 9to5 Mac
Xbox 720 to debut by 2013 holiday season, report says
The next-generation Xbox could see the light of day by this time next year, sources reportedly told Bloomberg. [Read more]![]()
CNET News
Like Mobile Shopping, Mobile Games Traffic Surges Worldwide During Thanksgiving Holiday
Americans weren’t just buying things online during last week’s holiday. According to new numbers from Chartboost, they were also glued to their mobile devices playing games, with those types of mobile software titles experiencing surges in traffic, as measured by sessions per day, and also with cost per install (CPI) going up outside the U.S., but experiencing a small dip within the country.
TechCrunch
A Guide For Mobile Game Developers To Survive The Holiday Season Rush
Editor’s note: Nate Barker is publisher relations manager and Jamie Evans is advertising account manager at Chartboost.
Here are a few things you need to know to stay calm, cool and collected this holiday season, so you can maximize the effectiveness of your mobile marketing budgets.
TechCrunch
Ask Slashdot: Best Console For the Kids This Holiday?
First time accepted submitter undulato writes “I’ve got an aging, fat PS3 with only a couple of games that I still play on it but three kids under 9 who love Skylanders, iPet, Lego whatever etc. We all watch movies on it and it has been pretty much the centre of our entertainment world for a few years now. I’ve already got a spare HDMI monitor we could use for a screen so my question is — should we go for a new console this Christmas? Just buy another controller or two and a new game or two for PS3 and be done? Or get the still pretty viable Xbox 360, or even plump for a cheap Wii or even a Wii U if we’re feeling flush. What do you think?”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
More American Kids Than Ever Clamor For iPhones And iPads This Holiday Season
Chance are, if you ask a kid in the U.S. what they want to find under the tree (or holiday symbol of your choosing) this year, they’ll ask for an iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or iPad mini. Those devices occupied four of the top five spots on Nielsen’s annual holiday shopping study among kids aged 6 to 12, which tracks interest in consumer buying habits over the next six months.
The other, other laptop: New $200 Chromebooks a holiday hit
Online holiday shopping at work may be huge drain on time, bandwidth
With Black Friday just a week away and the nagging feeling that we need to get our holiday shopping done, how much online buying will be done at work?
Computerworld News
Apple starts offering Passbook-enabled gift cards, may save our hides in holiday shopping
Gift cards often get a bad rap as the last resort in holiday shopping, what we supposedly get only when all hope of a carefully considered present has gone out the window. Apple isn’t quite so cyncial, and it may have injected new life into gift giving now that it has switched on buying gift cards through the recently updated Apple Store iOS app as of this weekend. Pick a color and a card value — up to $ 2,000, if someone’s been good enough to earn a MacBook Pro — and the resulting email lets iOS 6-touting recipients load the card into Passbook. Besides saving some plastic, the Passbook entry adds some worth through geofencing that reminds recipients to splurge if they’re near one of Apple’s steel-and-glass stores. All told, the card may be more than welcome by iPhone fans and save the ignominy of a last-minute rush to the store. Just make sure the recipient doesn’t mind going without a physical gift on the big day — it wouldn’t be right to drain all the romanticism out of a special occasion.
Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Apple
Apple starts offering Passbook-enabled gift cards, may save our hides in holiday shopping originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Early holiday decorations driving shoppers online?
A survey suggests that shoppers loathe that stores put up their Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, so they are even keener to shop online. [Read more]![]()
CNET News
HTC can’t take the heat, warns of rough holiday quarter
The smartphone maker continues to struggle with its turnaround, and expects revenue and profitability to fall even further in the fourth quarter. [Read more]![]()
CNET News
Tipping Point For The Touchscreen: Tablet Ad Spend Will Outweigh Smartphone Spend This Holiday Season, Says M&C Saatchi
With all eyes on an Apple event next week that many think will reveal a new, smaller iPad, the ad agency M&C Saatchi has come out with some compelling numbers that point to how tablets are overtaking smartphones when it comes to monetizing content. It says that the growth in ad spend on tablets is already outpacing that of smartphones, and by this holiday season tablet spend will, for the first time, be higher than that for smartphone campaigns.
TechCrunch
In Time For The Holiday Shopping Rush, Etsy Launches Gift Cards
In August, Etsy, the popular online marketplace for all things handmade, announced it would be launching the ability to give friends and family gift cards to the marketplace. Today, Etsy is debuting the new feature, allowing you to purchase gift cards online here.
TechCrunch
T-Mobile’s holiday roadmap leaked: LG Optimus L9, HTC Windows PhoneX spotted
According to a leaked roadmap on TMoNews, the magenta carrier appears to have a few tantalizing offerings coming its way this holiday season. A curious BlackBerry handheld dubbed the Armstrong, a color refresh of the Samsung Galaxy S II, a possibly Android-flavored Huawei Summit and the LG Optimus L9 are all slated to launch just on or before Halloween. Going into the next month, we see the HTC Windows PhoneX making the pre-Thanksgiving cut with a potential debut of November 14th. Notably absent are the Samsung Galaxy Note II and the Nokia Lumia 810, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be there when December rolls around. Of course, this info didn’t come through official channels, so we wouldn’t bank on any of the handsets as holiday gifts just yet. Still, its nice to know they’re coming, and you can get the full details on these and other devices at the source.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, HTC, LG, RIM, T-Mobile
T-Mobile’s holiday roadmap leaked: LG Optimus L9, HTC Windows PhoneX spotted originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Oct 2012 23:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Finnish based Holiday Club to build Angry Birds Activity Parks
Apple’s likely iPhone 5 announcement expected to kick off holiday shopping season
Microsoft announces plans for 32 holiday pop-up stores
Microsoft goes public with a full list of the pop-up brick-and-mortar stores it plans to open sometime this fall in the U.S. and Canada.
[Read more]
CNET News
Purported Xbox 720 To Cost $299 With Blu-ray Support, Kinect 2 And Virtual Reality In Time For Holiday 2013
The current gen Xbox may be a year past its halfway point but a purported “leaked” document dating back to August 2010 from a Microsoft presentation details the next gen Xbox 720 in great detail.
Features for the next Xbox, according to the document, will include native Blu-ray playback, full support for HD and 3-D, and beefed up hardware (graphics and processor) under the hood. Other bits and pieces from the doc include PVR functionality, a low power mode setting during media playback and what amounts to an always-on mode. Gates did say years ago that the Xbox would eventually become the nerve center for any living room.
But there’s more.
TechCrunch
Pew: tablet, e-reader ownership nearly doubled over the holiday season
The number crunchers over at the Pew Research Center have released another batch of market statistics today, this time, with a focus on tablets. According to the Center’s latest survey, 19 percent of all adult Americans now own some form of tablet, marking a nearly twofold increase over figures from a poll conducted in mid-December. E-reader ownership, meanwhile, increased by exactly the same margin over this period, jumping from 10 percent to 19 percent. These numbers also signal a healthy acceleration from the middle of this year, when the slate and reader markets apparently stagnated, ahead of the holiday shopping rush. Overall, about 28 percent of US adults own either a tablet or an e-reader, up from 19 percent last month. You can find more stats and breakdowns at the source link below.
Pew: tablet, e-reader ownership nearly doubled over the holiday season originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Sony racks up over 6.5 million in PlayStation sales over holiday season
Looks like Sony is reaping the benefits of strong holiday sales for its range of consoles coming under the PlayStation umbrella. After introducing the PS Vita early in December, the company managed to shift about 500,000 units in its own backyard, while ageing predecessor, the PSP, continued to sell 1.6 million units worldwide. Not to be outdone, the PS3 nearly broached the 4 million mark, bringing Sony closer to its fiscal year-end goal of 15 million for the five-year old gaming powerhouse. The system’s motion control add-on, Move, also moved a considerable 1.7 million units, with the PS2 still puttering along and enjoying “robust sales in emerging countries.” Brand equity? Sony’s got it in spades.
Continue reading Sony racks up over 6.5 million in PlayStation sales over holiday season
Sony racks up over 6.5 million in PlayStation sales over holiday season originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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With the holiday season upon us, let’s take a look at some of the gift-giving services and how well they work, writes contributor Natasha Starkell.
Touting its ability to notify someone immediately that you bought them a present, Facebook is showing large banners atop the web and mobile news feed telling people to buy Gifts. Facebook hopes tardy shoppers will purchase through its 





It looks like retail giant Walmart has made another acquisition. The e-commerce giant has bought 
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