EA Sports subscription model in the works, may take a while

While the idea is still on the drawing board, Electronic Arts has confirmed to be investigating an annual subscription model for its "EA Sports" brand. One document, said to be from the company, describes the service as, "an annual paid subscription that enhances your gaming experience," which is to include EA's core sports titles: Madden NFL, FIFA, NHL, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, SSX: Deadly Descents and NCAA Football.

With the regularity at which sports titles are released and the burgeoning expense of downloadable content, EA may be banking on avid armchair athletes finding an all-inclusive subscription peppered with incentives a fairly attractive offer. Such benefits are slated to include reduced prices for DLC (downloadable content), early access to unreleased games (up to a week), social recognition in the form of badges, DLC version portability and a few other perks.

According to a survey in circulation, EA's purported subscription plans may be similar to the ones outlined below:

his is also interesting news in the wake of the recent friction between Origin (EA's recent digital game distribution service) and Steam (Valve's well-established, competing platform). EA claimed a major hurdle with Steam as Valve made it impossible to, as an EA spokesperson put it, "give you the best possible gaming experience" through direct updates, patches and support. While some readers may find that statement dubious, one may possibly see the difficulty EA could have implementing this type of subscription plan on Steam.

There has been no mention of whether or not subscriptions are intended to eventually replace future purchase-to-own games, but depending on the annual price, this could either be a huge upset or a viable future for gaming. Of course, if this proves most successful, there may be little to keep EA from offer subscriptions for all genres of its games.

Is this the beginning of the end for á la carte gaming? What price and what features would convert you to a subscription?

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http://www.techspot.com/news/44816-ea-sports-subscription-model-in-the-works-may-take-a-while.html

Rumor: Windows 8 to play Xbox 360 games?

Take this with a grain of salt, but a number of sites are reporting today that the next version of Microsoft's desktop operating system, Windows 8, will let users play Xbox 360 discs on their PCs.

There isn't much information available at this point, and naturally many will be wondering why Microsoft would potentially cannibalize sales of its own console. But with Windows 8 still about a year away, and the company's next-gen console announcement expected in some form at E3 2012, the pieces could fall into place for a smart succession plan of Microsoft's gaming platform.

For one thing, the move would drastically increase the installed user base for the platform, allowing Microsoft to continue riding this console generation and profiting from game sales as it shifts focus to the next hardware update.

The next Xbox may or may not feature backwards compatibility. If Microsoft is developing some sort of emulator for Windows, I don't see a reason why the same functionality wouldn't make it to the 360's successor, but even if it doesn't Microsoft would be covering its back through this PC initiative by protecting people's investment in Xbox 360 games.

Microsoft has previously said it will relaunch PC gaming with Windows 8. The wealth of games that would come through this Xbox 360 integration could be a strong selling point for its next operating system, though hardcore gamers will certainly expect more than just being able to play console games with a mouse and keyboard.

According to the rumor, Xbox 360 on PC will require an Xbox Live Gold-like subscription service, but online gameplay will specifically prohibit cross-platform matchups to keep the playing field leveled. Take it for what it is: a rumor. But with that said, would you be interested in seeing Xbox 360 functionality on PCs with Windows 8?

Thank you : http://www.techspot.com/news/44644-rumor-windows-8-to-play-xbox-360-games.html

AMD unveils its fastest mobile GPU yet, the Radeon HD 6990M

Just a couple of weeks ago Nvidia announced its latest graphics chip, the GeForce GTX 580M, with the promise of delivering the best mobile gaming performance available anywhere. Well, AMD is now ready to challenge that claim. The company today announced the Radeon HD 6990M and is touting it as the new king of the hill.

Despite the name, the new Radeon is not based on the latest the Cayman architecture, nor it's packing dual-GPUs in a single card solution like its desktop counterpart. Instead, it features a full Barts core with all 1120 shaders enabled -- as opposed to 960 shaders for the HD 6970M, AMD's top mobile part prior to today's announcement. Core clock speeds have also been bumped to 715MHz, from 680MHz on the 6970M, while memory bandwidth remains the same at 115.2GB/s. The HD 6990M features 2GB of 3600MHz GDDR5 memory, instead of 1GB on the HD 6970M.

The closest desktop equivalent for the 6990M would be the HD 6870, which comes clocked 25% higher at 900MHz. In terms of features you get the now-standard DX11 support as well as HD3D (stereoscopic 3D) and OpenGL 4.1 support.

According to AMD's own internal benchmarks, the 6990M outperforms the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M by about 20% on 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark11, and is anywhere from 5% to 20% faster in a bunch of games. AMD's presentation didn't include any battery life numbers, and considering its latest GPU doesn't support the same sort of automatic graphics switching as Nvidia's Optimus, it's likely that the green team still has the upper hand in this area.

AMD says the 6990M will be available starting today in the Alienware M18x, in both single and CrossFire configurations, while Clevo will also support the HD 6990M in their P170HM, P150HM, and X7200 notebooks.

Thank you : http://www.techspot.com/news/44643-amd-unveils-its-fastest-mobile-gpu-yet-the-radeon-hd-6990m.html