Once upon a time, when articles about video game stories appeared on sheets of glossy paper that were bound together with glue, a 19-year-old named Geoff Keighley got the idea to go hang out with the developers of Half-Life as they put the final touches on the game and write about it.

The resulting story, "The Final Hours of Half-Life," published in 1998, pulled back the curtains on a little-known world of game developers and shed light on the grueling, caffeine- and adrenaline-fueled lives of the coders, designers and testers at Valve Software.

Thirteen years later, Keighley, who went on to host a television show on video games called "GT.TV" on MTV's Spike channel, is making the leap to mobile, releasing an iPad app that features his story on the making of Portal 2, the most recent game released by Valve.

 What's changed? For one thing, Valve and its founder, Gabe Newell (right), is now a powerhouse developer with titles such as Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead and Team Fortress under its belt. And with game distribution going digital, its Steam platform for downloadable games on PCs and Macs, the Bellevue, Wash., company is in the catbird seat.

The app is also an example of how game journalism is evolving to attempt to reach a younger generation of readers who are less likely to be sitting in front of a computer or flipping through paper magazines. With embedded videos, music, and links galore, the $1.99 app kicks up the article's production value a notch. But the writing and reporting is still solid old school.

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Kinect sells more than 10 million units, scores Guinness World Records nod

Microsoft to open up motion-sensing Kinect to developers, academics via SDK release

-- Alex Pham

twitter.com/AlexPham

Photo: Valve founder Gabe Newell, holding a prototype of the gun used in Portal 2. Credit: Valve.

Microsoft has made it into the Guinness World Records with its Kinect for Xbox 360, officially the Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device.

The hands-free gaming device sold faster than the various iterations of the iPhone and iPad, as consumers snapped up an average of 133,333 units daily.

That’s a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale, speedier than any competitor in the same period.

Kinect showed up on shelves on Nov. 4 and has since then blazed past 10 million sales worldwide. And that’s without any sex games.

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Microsoft to open up motion-sensing Kinect to developers, academics via SDK release

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-- Tiffany Hsu [follow]

Photo: A man plays a Kinect for XBox 360 boxing game at the Microsoft booth during the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January. Credit: Steve Marcus / Reuters

Microsoft plans to open up its Kinect motion-sensing controller for the Xbox 360 to a wide array of engineers with the release of a Software Development Kit planned for this spring.

The Kinect SDK will be made available to noncommercial users such as enthusiasts and academic researchers.

"Microsoft's investments in natural user interfaces are vital to our long-term vision of creating computers that are intuitive to use and able to do far more for us," said Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, in a company blog post. "The fruits of these research investments are manifesting across many of our products, Kinect for Xbox 360 among them."

A commercial version of the Kinect SDK is planned for a later date, Microsoft said.

"The SDK will give users access to deep Kinect system information such as audio, system application-programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor," the company said.

The move to release a proper Kinect SDK makes sense for Microsoft.

Kinect had already caught the attention of hackers, academics and some unwanted developers, who've come up with imaginative ways to use the camera system without such a resource.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Photo: Employee Sean Jones exercises to a Kinect game in a Microsoft Store in Bellevue, Wash., last month. Credit: Elaine Thompson / Associated Press

HTC unveiled the Flyer, its first tablet, on Tuesday in Barcelona, Spain, during the Mobile World Congress event.

With the Flyer, HTC seems to be aiming for a higher-end feel with an aluminum body, a 7-inch touchscreen and a quick 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm.

The device, which is set to hit retail stores in the second quarter of the year, will come with 32 gigabytes of storage and connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, as well as 3G and 4G HSPA+ networks.

Android Honeycomb will not be pre-installed on the Flyer, but users will be able to upgrade to the tablet-optimized version of Android from Android Gingerbread, a build of Google's operating system designed for smart phones.

HTC's Sense interface for Android makes its way from the company's phones over to the Flyer with the recognizable time and weather widget on the home screen.

Apps can also be run in a split-screen view, allowing a user to use two apps at the same time -- say the Website for a record store where a user can get an address, split with Google maps to locate it and find directions.

A digital pen will be packed with the Flyer for drawing and writing in certain apps on the tablet in what the company is calling HTC Scribe technology.

A 5-megapixel camera is on the back of the tablets, while a 1.3-megapixel camera can be found on the front for use with video chat software such as Skype.

The tablet will also be the first device offered with the company's HTC Watch video download service.

HTC described the service as "low-cost, on-demand progressive downloading of hundreds of High-Definition movies from major studios."

Another interesting addition is video games through OnLive, the cloud-based gaming service for laptops and TVs. HTC said users will be able to connect the Flyer to television sets to play games via OnLive, or games can be played directly on the tablet.

HTC didn't mention how games that have previously required the use of a video game controller on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 would be played on the tablet, but promised titles such as Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, NBA 2K11 and Lego Harry Potter.

Below is a marketing video HTC posted on YouTube for the Flyer.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Top photo: An HTC employee demos the new Flyer tablet computer at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Tuesday. Credit: Denis Doyle/Bloomberg

Bottom: HTC Flyer. Credit: HTC

Sony announced at CES that it is putting 3-D on just about every visually related product it makes, with a full line of 3-D point-and-shoot cameras, 3-D camcorders, 3-D laptops and someday 3-D screens that sit inches away from your eyes.

The electronics giant touted its product line for 2011, "a year in which 3-D becomes personal," with presentations by Sony executives, led by Chief Executive Howard Stringer at a news conference at the Las Vegas Convention Center as a part of the Consumer Electronics Show.

And Sony isn't just hoping you'll buy its 3-D movies and watch its 3-D TV channel -- called 3Net and launching in three months with assistance from the Discovery Channel and Imax -- it's hoping you'll make some 3-D content of your own, with its products of course.

Glasses will be required to see the 3-D images on Sony's Vaio F Series laptop, as well as the video and photos captured by its Cyber-Shot cameras. 

However, on the back of its Flip cam rival, the Bloggie 3-D, is a glasses-free 3-D screen 2.4 inches big, which plays back the depth-added videos and photos a user shoots. And one model of Sony's 3-D camcorders, the HDR-TD10, has a glasses-free 3.5-inch display.

The HDR-TD10 records in full high definition, with a 1080p resolution, and 3-D videos a consumer makes can be viewed on a 3-D TV via an HDMI cable. The camcorder will ship in April for about $1,500, Sony said. It will feature two lenses, two processors and two image sensors to record the 3-D images, and the camera packs a 64-gigabyte hard drive.

The 3-D Bloggie, which also records in full 1080p HD, will sell for about $250 and feature an 8-gigabyte flash drive and a 5-megapixel resolution and arrive in stores in April as well.

A Vaio laptop with a 3-D-compatible screen, dubbed the F Series, will arrive in stores later this year for about $1,700. The F Series will feature a full 1080p HD screen of 16 inches, with a TV-style 16:9 aspect ratio. Other features include a built-in Blu-ray drive and an Intel Core i7 processor. Pre-orders are being taken for the 3-D laptops at www.sonystyle.com/fseries.

Sony displayed a glasses-free 3-D screen on a portable Blu-ray player, but that was just a prototype, as was a 3-D head-mounted display that looked somewhat like the eyepiece worn by the comic book character Cyclops from X-Men.

The head-mounted prototype is made up of two OLED displays that send a unique image to each eye to create the 3-D effect.

Sony also showed off -- at its CES booth and not onstage -- three prototype glasses-free TVs for home use: a 24.5-inch OLED screen and a 46-inch and a 56-inch LCD set.

Kazuo "Kaz" Hirai, head of Sony Computer Entertainment, made some non-3-D teases, saying PlayStation-related products in the mobile space would be arriving later in the year, and he said Sony was working on a tablet.

But Hirai and Sony offered no details on the tablet, what it would look like or when it would arrive, just that it was being worked on.

Sony also announced a monthly subscription music streaming service called Music Unlimited, which will be offered this year through its Qriocity streaming media platform on its Internet-connected TVs and PlayStation 3. Just how much the service will cost, or an official release date, wasn't disclosed.

Aside from 3-D, Stringer said Internet-connected TVs were Sony's other main consumer push, estimating that more than 50 million TVs will be Internet-enabled worldwide through Sony's PlayStation 3, Wi-Fi Blu-ray players and Internet-connected TVs.

"This is a significant base of connected products," he said. "Size does matter."

Before getting into the flurry of 3-D-related announcements, the presentation was started with a scene in 3-D from the Sony Pictures movie "The Green Hornet," which hits theaters Jan. 14.

After the preview, which the crowd watched with 3-D glasses, a rotating platform on the stage showcased the Black Beauty car from the movie, with Stringer and "Green Hornet" stars Seth Rogen and Jay Chou.

Standing alongside the two Hollywood celebrities, Stringer said with little laughs, "You've got to think that this car makes James Bond's Aston Martin look sissy, doesn't it?"

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
twitter.com/nateog

Photos: Top, the Sony HDR-TD10 and, bottom, the Bloggie 3-D. Credit: Sony

Nintendo's 3DS video game system might be hazardous to the health of children younger than 6, according to a warning posted Wednesday on the Japanese video game company's website.

"Vision of children under the age of 6 [is in] the developmental stage," Nintendo's warning said, according to a Google translation of the website. "Nintendo 3DS, 3-D, including 3-D movies and television, delivers 3-D images with different left and right eye images," which "has a potential impact on the growth of children's eyes."

The 3DS is the gaming giant's latest version of its DS line of handheld video game consoles. The feature of the 3DS that separates it from Nintendo's popular other DS systems: It can handle 3-D gaming and movies, displaying the depth-adding effect without requiring users to wear 3-D glasses.

Although Nintendo is advising that only the preschool crowd refrain from using the new system's 3-D feature, it also recommends in its note that all players -- children and adults -- should take breaks from its glasses-free 3-D gaming every 30 minutes, or whenever a user feels sick.

The 3DS will also have a "3-D volume" sliding button that will let users tone down the level of depth of 3-D images, the notice said.

It also said the 3DS would have a parental control feature that could restrict the console's screens to traditional 2-D images. Games, movies and other media displayed in 2-D will be safe for gamers younger than 6, the Nintendo warning said.

There is "enough for everyone to enjoy," it said.

Nintendo is set to release the 3DS in Japan on Feb. 26 for about $300. The 3DS is to arrive in U.S. stores in March, the company has said; a price hasn't yet been announced.

The 3DS isn't Nintendo's first try at 3-D video games. In 1995 the company released the Virtual Boy, which had two LED screens that displayed black and red 3-D effects in a viewfinder-like device.

The Virtual Boy didn't catch on. It was discontinued in 1996 and is one of Nintendo's few console failures.

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

twitter.com/nateog

Top photo: Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, introduces the Nintendo 3DS game device at the E3 expo in Los Angeles on June 15. Credit: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

Bottom photo: Nintendo Virtual Boy handout art from 1995. Credit: Nintendo

Researchers at USC have hacked a Microsoft Kinect camera and gotten it to control the hugely popular computer game, World of Warcraft.

And the software they used to pull it off, known as Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit or FAAST, is downloadable for free online.

FAAST, built by USC's Institute for Creative Technologies, allows users to play computer games with a Kinect motion-sensor camera by translating body movements into the inputs that would otherwise be triggered a keyboard and mouse, or a gaming controller with joysticks and buttons.

A video on YouTube from the researchers shows off FAAST controlling World of Warcraft, a hugely popular computer game in which players control a customized character in a land of witches and knights and gnomes.

In the video, Skip Rizzo, one of the researchers, touts the software and motion-sensing camera such as the Kinect as a tool toward healthier lives for those who spend hours a day playing computer games.

"I think the real compelling aspect of all this is that you can now take off-the-shelf games, content that's already built, and emulate the keyboard actions with body movement," Rizzo said in the video. "This opens up the doorway for building rehabilitation exercises for people after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. And in an area that's getting a lot of attention, the area of childhood obesity and diabetes."

"You got a kid who’s interacting with World of Warcraft for six hours a day, perhaps a parent can step in and say, 'Hey, alright, for one hour of that time, you're going to do it with the Kinect ... and you're got to exercise while you're doing it,'" he said.

"So, instead of using a thumb controller to move your character, you've got to run in place, you've got to use arm gestures and you actually build into the application for a way for a kid to physically engage with digital content like a game."

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twitter.com/nateog

Video: World of Warcraft being controlled by Microsoft Kinect. Credit: Evan A. Suma of USC's Institute for Creative Technologies via YouTube

Image: World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion box for the World of Warcraft computer game. Credit: Blizzard Entertainment

Samsung is going to show off its Galaxy Player, an Android-based competitor to Apple's iPod Touch, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, according to the Samsung Hub blog.

The Galaxy Player is a portable music player based on Samsung's successful Galaxy S smart phone and is essentially a Galaxy S sans any cellular-phone calling capability -- as Apple's iPod Touch is to the iPhone.

Samsung Hub, a blog unaffiliated with the tech giant, also reported that the Galaxy Player will be 9.9 mm thick and run Google's Android 2.2 Froyo operating system.

Froyo is the same version of Android found on both the Galaxy S and the company's Galaxy Tab, which competes with Apple's iPad.

The Galaxy Player will run off a 1GHz CPU and sport a 4-inch LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 800-by-480 pixels, Samsung Hub said.

The device won't utilize a cellular connection, instead relying on Wi-Fi to download e-mails, apps, games, music and movies, the blog said.

Headphones and other peripherals will be able to connect with the Galaxy Player by way of Bluetooth, and photos can be snapped with a 3.2-mega-pixel rear camera, Samsung Hub said.

A front-facing camera for video calling will sit atop the screen as well. The Galaxy Player will be sold with 8GB, 16GB or 32GB flash drives, the blog reported.

No details were offered as to when the Galaxy Players will make their way into stores or how much they'll cost. Officials at Samsung were unavailable for comment Monday morning.

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Image: Samsung Galaxy Player. Credit: Samsung Hub

Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller has been out for less than two months and already there’s an adult company looking to produce a 3-D sex game for the Xbox 360 console.

But Microsoft, maker of Kinect and Xbox, immediately shot down any speculation that the game will pass the certification process.

Kinect enables video game players to move characters through the use of real-life movements made possible by 3-D object scanning and manipulation. Kinect uses cameras and microphones to track movement and voice commands as a controller.

So the Web was buzzing earlier this week when ThriXXX, an Austria-based game company, posted a YouTube video featuring a graphic demo of a 3-D adult game using the controller for Xbox 360.

But when Microsoft was asked about the prospects of the game actually making it to the video game console, a spokesperson said in a statement that it wasn't going to happen. 

"This isn't the first example of a technology being used in ways not intended by its manufacturer, and it won't be the last," the statement said.

"Microsoft did not authorize or license its technology for this use," it said. "Xbox is a family friendly games and entertainment console and does not allow Adults Only (AO) content to be certified for use on its platform, and would not condone this type of game for Kinect."

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Upper photo: Screen grab of ThriXXX's game demo posted on YouTube. Credit: ThriXXX

Lower photo: Xbox 360 and Kinect controller. Credit: Microsoft

Pop the tailgate on the Giant Robot Scion xB and you can play Super Mario Bros. or Mega Man.

Or, if you'd like, lean into the driver's seat and play Return of the Quack, a game about a duck ... sitting on top of another duck ... shooting flying Fudgsicles and broccoli out of a yellow sky.

This isn't the same xB you'll find in Scion showrooms or even the L.A. Auto Show.

This xB is one-of-a-kind and built to the specifications of Eric Nakamura, a video-game lover and publisher of Giant Robot magazine.

And the car, which took about three months and more than $30,000 to build, is a video-game console on wheels.

The headlights and the reverse light on the rear bumper have built-in projectors to shine video games onto walls the car is parked near.

In the trunk, a Nintendo Wii and a vintage 1980s Nintendo Famicom (the Japanese version of the U.S.' Nintendo Entertainment System) are installed powering the images projected from the xB at either end.

The seat belt buckles are topped with controllers, the shift knob is a joystick and the car starts not with a key but rather with an old Nintendo video-game cartridge.

Scion, Toyota's offshoot company aimed at selling cars to younger buyers, builds a couple of custom cars designed with input from people outside the automotive industry each year.

Last year, for the L.A. Auto Show, Scion showed off an xD designed by the operators of the Kogi Korean BBQ food truck.

The custom cars are a marketing scheme for Scion, but the projects also give folks like Nakamura the chance to do something they otherwise might never be able to do.

"Designing a car, a real car, from beginning to end is just something you don't get a chance to do," Nakamura said. "So I figure this is one of those opportunities you just got to grab 'cause I don't think we'll have other car companies calling me any time soon saying, 'Can you design a car for me?'

"This might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, you know?"

Scion approached Nakamura about the collaboration, based on any theme he wanted.

The choice was easy, he said, given his lifelong affinity for video games.

The white-and-gray paint scheme on the custom xB, rimmed with a red body kit, was chosen to mirror the colors of Nintendo's past video-game systems, Nakamura said.

"We wanted to celebrate old video games but also the future at the same time," he said at Scion Installation Los Angeles, where the car, along with video-game-inspired artwork, is on display until Dec. 11 in an exhibit called Pixel Pushers.

"This car kind of has that look; a little bit concept-car-ish," Nakamura said. "But ultimately you want the car to look cool just by itself.

"You don't want to look just like a video-game car. I wanted it to be a cool car that does all this stuff."

And yes, it drives too.

"We joy-rided it in Orange County one night," Nakamura said. "We decided to take it out just as a test drive -- we rode around through neighborhoods and onto busy streets. I got it up to about 60.

"We took it to a gas station and people just swarmed the car right away to check it out. It was kind of cool."

Those who make the trip to Scion Installation Los Angeles to see the car can sit in it and play video games in the Culver City art gallery.

Return of the Quack, one of the playable games, was built to coincide with the exhibit in a collaboration of Giant Robot, Scion, San Francisco artist Matt Furie and video-game designer Chevy Ray Johnston.

The game was given away in the a recent issue of Giant Robot and can also be played online or at the exhibit, from the driver's seat of the custom xB or in wooden arcade-style units in the gallery.

As of now, Scion has no plans to build a second car with Nakamura. Though the magazine publisher who also owns four Giant Robot Asian pop culture retail stores and a restaurant called Gr/eats, said he has a few ideas if called upon.

"That would be a dream, huh?" Nakamura said. "And I'm ready to do it."

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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles

Video: Interview with Eric Nakamura, publisher of Giant Robot magazine and designer of the Giant Robot Scion xB art car. Credit: Nathan Olivarez-Giles/Los Angeles Times. Photos: Giant Robot Scion xB and a screen shot of Return of the Quack. Credit: Scion.