Software News

The falling price of NAND and subsequent downwards spiral of SSD unit prices have prompted Toshiba to attempt a price hike by stopping or reducing its output by an overall margin of 30% for a couple of months.

The company hoped that such a move will lead to a modest breaking of the falling NAND prices, but some other reasons, particular to the Japanese situation were also involved.

We discussed Toshiba’s strategy in detail here.

Micron was quick to take advantage of Toshiba’s move and has flooded the market with its own SSDs and this led to a huge shipments increase in this sector.

The unit prices, on the other hand have fallen as the total SSD revenue increase was only at 33%, therefore the prices have fallen despite Toshiba’s temporary reduction in production.

Now that Samsung has moved to 21nm manufacturing and uses TLC technology on top of that, the prices will surely continue to fall.

Toshiba is already manufacturing NAND in 19nm technology and, although Intel will not move to a finer process until next Spring, the SSD market will grow especially based on prices going down.

As we can see from Micron’s results, the profitability is also going down considerably and it now seems that smaller, independent SSD makers such as OCZ are not going to be able to stand on their own anymore.

Historic characters such as OCZ’s chief financial officer Mr. Art Knapp or the well-known CEO Mr. Ryan Petersen are leaving the company exactly before OCZ is getting ready to release an alleged revolutionary controller.

We’ve discussed about OCZ’s new Aragon RISC processor here and we also unveiled the company’s future SSDs here, so the prospects of the company should be looking good for the next year.

Art and Ryan leaving the company are hinting an opposite outcome.

Moreover, the fact that SSD prices  are on the same steep downward slope despite one of the big NAND players has been trying its best to create a modest “void” on the supply side to increase or stabilize prices in the face of increasing demand, is prompting us to expect significant changes in the SSD world.


Via: SSD Prices Continue to Fall as Shipments Increase - A Storm May Be Coming

With the return of my colleague Andrei Dobra to game playing duties we have two full Softepdia reviews to deliver this week: one for the highly expected Borderlands 2, the stylish shooter from developer Gearbox and publisher 2K Games, and one for Shad’O, a tower defense title preoccupied with the issues of memory.

We also have a number of Quick Looks this week: one for the demo version of the turn- based strategy XCOM: Enemy Unknown, one for a Starcraft II inspired indie called Tryst and the last one for FIFA 13.

In the area of Gamer Diaries we have a new one which details my space-based adventures in FTL, the Kickstarter funded roguelike that is inspired by everything from Star Trek to Firefly.

When it comes to Weekend Reading columns, we have one piece about the way DLC is changing the gaming space and one concerning cooperative modes in games like Borderlands 2 or Torchlight 2.

We also offer an EndWeekGame piece and a selection of the most significant news of the week that passed us by.

On Monday Blizzard suggested that multiplayer for Starcraft II might become free-to-play, while Treyarch talked about the way team cooperation changes the multiplayer in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

On Tuesday Black Ops 2 was again in the news as the leading multiplayer designer talked about possible nerfs to the perk system, and Borderlands 2 had some issues soon after launch.

On Wednesday BioWare leaked the details for the coming downloadable content linked to Mass Effect 3 and Nintendo talked about the millions of players that might still buy the original Wii.

On Thursday the developers talked about terminal use in Halo 4 and a rumor suggested that Valve might be purchased by Nexon.

On Friday BioWare revealed that it had special plans for female Shepard in the upcoming Mass Effect Trilogy, while the creator of Minecraft announced he was refusing to port its game to Windows 8.

On Saturday a former Ensemble employee talked about Halo Wars and Nintendo offered info on new content for New Super Mario Bros. 2.

Via: A Gamers Week: September 30

The biggest problem with space is that it’s pretty much infinite and that there’s no way of knowing what’s out there.

FTL, the roguelike title from Subset Games, understands that any man who has the size and the unknowingness of space pressed upon his mind will feel fear and the game then manages to use that feeling to great effect.

When you first run the game it seems simple enough: get a ship, a crew and a number of meager resources and then explore a randomly generated universe while trying to escape an unbeatable fleet that’s always snapping at your heel.

Soon after the sense of discovery is replaced by constant dread, a fear that’s deep inside my gaming mind every time I get ready to push the bright yellow Jump button and then move to a new area.

Each star system inside a larger sector can contain a straight up battle, a multiple choice situation, a merchant or nothing at all.

As the game progresses, the encounters with enemy ships become much more difficult, the choices are starker and the feeling of dread increases.

I had moments when the only thing I wanted was to get to a store in order to repair my hull and get some more missiles only to get into a sector where I was boarded and my whole crew was killed.

I had one game where I had more scap (FTL’s main resource) than I knew what to do with and very weak weapons, yet I was unable to get to a store that sold weaponry for three sectors and I was destroyed by a much more powerful enemy.

The randomness and the roguelike permanent death combine to create a game where every choice and every move is scary but that keeps me coming back after each death, hoping for better star layout and better overall results.

Via: FTL Diary: The Giant Threat of Space

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you've probably heard about the recent iOS Maps fiasco. While the media always exaggerates in reporting these blunders, Apple itself has admitted that more work is necessary to bring the iOS Maps up to par.

While Apple prides itself on offering in-house developed solutions, the company is still forced (for now) to display Google Maps on its web site for whoever is trying to locate a store.

Pictured above is Apple’s Google-powered store locator in San Francisco, USA.

The Cupertino, California-based computer giant cannot risk misguiding customers looking to pay them a visit, whether it’s for buying something new, or even for returning a product.

CEO Tim Cook has promised that his company’s Maps service will get better in time. When that happens, Apple.com is likely to start using the new Apple Maps too.

Via: Even Apple Doesnt Use Its Own Maps

Wireless carrier US Cellular has just made available for purchase on its network a new device running under Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.5 operating system, namely the ZTE Render.

This is the smartphone previously known as ZTE Orbit, capable of offering some appealing features to the carrier’s users.

The handset was announced with a $179 price tag attached to it with the signing of a two-year contract agreement and after a $100 mail-in rebate.

The phone’s specs list includes a 4-inch WVGA touchscreen, along with a 1GHz MSM7627A Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and 512MB of RAM packed inside.

Moreover, it comes with a 5-megapixel photo snapper on the back, as well as with 4G of internal memory. A 1600mAh battery has been packed inside the smartphone, along with the Windows Phone 7.5 Tango 2 platform.

Via: US Cellular Launches WP 7.5-Based ZTE Render