The Czechs detained in Greece to pay bail and return home...

Two developers from Czech Republic who were held in a Greek jail since September on suspicion of espionage will be, according to information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, released on bail. Several days ago their attorney Dagmar Raupachová said that the Greek authorities should make a decision regarding their further appeal during January, mid February at the latest. Martin Pezlar and Ivan Buchta will be able to return back to the Czech Republic once they are released. Prime Minister Petr Ne?as was so informed by his Greek counterpart Antonis Samaras.

Government’s spokesperson Michal Schuster:
“As a result of repeated dealings, today the Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras informed the Czech Prime Minister Petr Ne?as over the telephone that the two Czech arrested by Greek police because of supposed photography of military objects on the island of Lemnos have been released. Petr Ne?as expressed appreciation for the efforts of PM Antonis Samaras and thanked him.”

http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/Bioshock-Infinite-Will-Take-Full-Advantage-PC-Platform

Despite the yearly proclamations of death, PC gaming is still alive and kicking. 2012 saw a number of developers put more emphasis back on the PC in multi-platform development schedules. It seems that Irrational Games also realizes the advantages of the PC platform with Bioshock Infinite. In an interview with Ken Levine and Chris Kline of Irrational Games, the developers told IGN what the company is doing to develop the PC version of the game. While they encountered several issues during development of the first Bioshock, Irrational Games is giving Bioshock Infinite its own team of on-call programmers to develop the PC version.

Reportedly, the developers underestimated the time and effort required to develop the first Bioshock game using DirectX 10 technology and a PC-optimized UI. In the interview with IGN, Irrational Games’ Technical Director Chris Kline stated that “this time around things were done differently.” Irrational Game has a team of programmers, artists, designers, and UI specialists dedicated to the PC development track along with the team working on the console versions.

So if you've read the previous posting about Tegra 4/ Shield by Nvidia, and that Steam is officially supporting Linux now. Is this the year for *nix/android gaming to come to fruition?

First up is Ouya. Developers have received a per-release version of the hardware that they will be getting in March. It interesting that they are fostering hacking and tinkering of the hardware. Be interesting to see what the devs can do with the hardware.

http://youtu.be/psCoR4zmIpE

On the the opposite spectrum is the luxery console by Valve, the Piston steam box.
http://bit.ly/10vr5OI

check out Steam's list of Linux games:
http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/

Killing floor and Red orchestra are supported. One can speculate that ro2 or the expansion will be made to run on Linux eventually. Valve has committed to making it easy to get all 2500 games in its library running on Linux. This is what I think will be the big deal. If they can bring the content, then the hw/devs can bring the rest. reminds me of win95/early xp error of fps gaming when the hw and software guys were one upping each other.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/01/08/do-you-want-to-get-piston/?utm_source=feedburner&;utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RockPaperShotgun+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%29

RPS has a bunch of videos of SteamBox.

Below is from HardwareCunucks on the press release:

In a press release sent to journalists late yesterday, Valve and compact PC manufacturer Xi3 announced the Piston, a first-stage development computer that’s been optimized for Steam. At this point, both Valve and Xi3 are keeping a whole lot of information close to their chests but some additional details have begun to emerge. What we do know is that Valve has made a substantial investment in Xi3 for the continued development of Piston and whatever mass market implementations may follow.

Piston is based off of Xi3’s compact X7A modular system. When bought directly through Xi3, the X7A typically comes equipped with a custom mini ITX motherboard, AMD’s embedded R-Series APUs, an integrated 384-core 7660G graphics processor and 8GB of memory. It only requires about 40W while in operation. These certainly aren’t high end specs but the actual hardware configuration within Valve’s Piston could very well be quite different. In addition, the Piston in no way represents final hardware. Rather, it is a beta dev platform that will likely be used for compatibility testing, viability research and other high level pre-release duties.

NVIDIA has been producing graphics cards for hard-core gamers for years. But now the company is introducing its first gaming console: a 5 inch handheld gaming system code-named Project Shield.

The system runs stock Google Android software and you can download any games or other apps from the Play Store, but there’s also a “Shield” mode which brings up a game browser and access to the TegraZone game store.

Project Shield features a 38Whr battery which is good for up to 24 hours of video playback, or 5 to 10 hours of game play.

The system also features heavy-duty audio components, HDMI output, a micro USB port, microSD card slot, and 3.5mm audio jack.

You can plug in an external display and use the system with a TV, and in today’s unveiling, the company even showed off Project Shield powering a 4K display and playing videos on games on the high resolution screen.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/01/01/2013-preview/

The original game was a right old mess and yet defied critics, QA testers and any sense of worldly justice with some two-million plus sales. Its sequel promises to rectify the mistakes, ditch its more gung-ho shooter sections and return to authentically stealthy sniping action. The CryEngine 3 makes it all look rather spiffy, and will hopefully curtail the number of instances when the player tumbles through the floor into infinity.

We want to wish everyone a Holidays from your friends at the -V-!