Soon after Dead Space 3 was released, rumors circulated saying its inevitable sequel, Dead Space 4, would be canceled due to the game’s poor sales. Soon after the rumor made its rounds, EA responded saying “the franchise remains an important IP to EA.”

Even though Dead Space remains to be an important series to the company, EA executive Patrick Söderlund confirmed in an interview with Eurogamer Dead Space developer Visceral Games isn’t currently working on the game’s sequel. Instead, Söderlund confirms the development studio is “working on something else very exciting.” Of course, Söderlund doesn’t go into detail as to what exactly this “very exciting” project may be, but he does say he believes Visceral Games needed a break from Dead Space in order to get their creativity back.

Hopefully Visceral Games’ break from Dead Space will result in a much better experience in its upcoming sequel, and who knows, maybe this new project will become the development studios’ bread and butter. Either way, we can’t wait to see what they come up with next.

Samsung hasn’t made a wide variety of colors available for its Galaxy S4 yet as customers can only purchase the device in either White Frost or Black Mist. But today, Samsung has made a new color available for AT&T customers called Red Aurora.

As you would expect from the color name, the new Galaxy S4 is completely decked out in red along with silver and white accents found throughout the entire device. The red aurora Galaxy S4 is completely exclusive to AT&T and sells for the same cost as other color variants of the smartphone, which is $199.99 as long as you agree to a two-year contract.

If you absolutely need a red Galaxy S4, then AT&T seems to be your only option at this point, although you may want to hold off picking up the device today considering Samsung has some big news coming tomorrow. The company is expected to announce some new Galaxy and ATIV devices, which one rumor suggest we could be seeing a new Galaxy Camera being announced. Either way, it wouldn’t kill you to wait until this weekend to pick up your red Galaxy S4, would it?

Facebook has been receiving some nice updates over the past couple of weeks, the biggest being its support of hashtags, which is a method of tagging that originated from Twitter and has even been supported by social networking rival Google+ for several months. Facebook has released a new update today, but this time, it’s focusing on updating its iOS application.

Facebook version 6.2 now allows its users to add emoji-style icons to their status updates to share how they’re feeling in addition to whatever they deem important enough to be shared in a status update. This feature was made available on Facebook earlier this year, and has finally made itself available onto iOS. As of now, only the English version of Facebook’s iOS app has the ability to share how you’re feeling.

The ability to share how you’re feeling along with your status update isn’t the only improvement Facebook rolled out into its iOS application as they also now allow users to change their privacy settings on posts they’ve already shared to either include or leave out certain users from reading their updates.

If you weren’t up all night playing The Last of Us on your PlayStation 3, then you may have avoided the drama that occurred overnight in regards to the console’s latest 4.45 system update. The update has reportedly been the cause of a number of PlayStation 3s to become unusable, or “bricked” as most gamers would call it. Fortunately, Sony is aware of the problem and has pulled the update from the PlayStation Network.

Sony’s PlayStation European Twitter account sent out a message earlier today confirming firmware update 4.45 has been pulled, saying they’re “aware of reports that the recent PS3 update (4.45) has caused,” and are currently investigating what could have caused the issue as well as what users are being bricked as a result of the update.

At this time, it’s unknown how Sony will treat customers who have unfortunately had their consoles bricked as a result of its 4.45 firmware update, but we would think the company would offer some kind of reimbursement, especially since its PlayStation 4 is going to be released in just a few months. The last thing Sony needs right now is a PR nightmare over this bricking issue.

We were able to spot the HTC Butterfly S last week in the wild, which looks to feature Beats Audio BoomSound speakers. Today, HTC is officially announcing its newest Android handset and its specs seem to be pretty good.

The HTC Butterfly S is a nice improvement over the original Butterfly as it features a 5-inch 1080p Super LCD 3 display, 1.9GHz quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, 2GB of RAM, an UltraPixel rear-facing camera, 2.1MP front-facing camera, 3,200mAh battery and will use HTC Sense 5 with BlinkFeed.
Read full post →HTC Announces HTC Butterfly S Featuring 5-inch 1080p Display, Quad-Core CPU

In February earlier this year, Microsoft Research rolled out BLINK, which happens to be a handy free photo app for Windows Phone 8 which is capable of capturing a burst of images whenever you keep the shutter button on your smartphone pressed down, letting you select the best shot from the entire bunch later on. Microsoft claimed the BLINK ended up as an unprecedented hit, having achieved over 317,000 downloads and hundreds of 5-star reviews in the four month period following its release.

Well, there is no point in sitting on one’s laurels, which is why Microsoft scientists have churned out an update to BLINK, where version 2.0 would be able to introduce additional abilities that enable one to create and share short video clips. Is it just me, or are short video clips growing to be all the rage these days? After all, Instagram is set to unveil video support from June 20th onwards, while Vine continues to rise in popularity. BLINK could be taken to the next level where a Lens app is concerned.

Here is where Daft Punk’s “Higher Stronger Faster” song comes in to echo the latest updates that are applied to the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, where it would then allow this particular device to fly further, faster and of course, higher. You will get to experience even more astonishing flights, as flights will now be able to be displayed in 3D, while video storage and GPS localization is also made possible courtesy of a new Flight Recorder module. Not only that, you are able to gain access to the Director Mode feature which will cater for filming what is under the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 from high up above, making you feel like you are an old hand with it.

Not only that, a spanking new High Density Battery has also been touted to increase the flight time by a whopping 50%, now how about that? I guess it is technological advancements and updates like these which breathe a new lease of life into your Parrot AR.Drone 2.0, and we definitely are wondering what other surprises that Parrot has in store for the AR.Drone 2.0 sometime down the road.

Earlier this February, we brought you word that GameStick pre-orders have been going up for $79 a pop, with the first orders tipped to ship sometime in April 2013. Having said that, April 2013 has already come and gone, and we are more than halfway through the year now without any further news on GameStick’s next proposed shipping date. At least, until now, as PlayJam recently announced that the first GameStick Android gaming devices will begin to ship this coming August.

Better late than never applies here I guess, and those who have placed their money to back the GameStick in their Kickstarter campaign will be able to receive theirs first before the rest of the world who preferred to stand back and watch things happen before taking the plunge. Just a quick refresher – the GameStick device comes across as a small stick which can be plugged into the HDMI port on a TV, so that you can enjoy an Android-based game on a far larger display in your living room as compared to even a 13.3” Android-powered tablet. There will also be an optional dock that increases the amount of connectivity by including USB ports, an Ethernet jack, and power.

The folks over at Google have done it yet again, increasing the reach of their online services by rolling out support for another 18 languages, bringing the total number of languages “spoken” by Google Drive to 65 after the latest additions. The new languages would be Afrikaans, Amharic, Basque, Chinese (Hong Kong), Estonian, French (Canada), Galician, Icelandic, Khmer, Lao, Malay, Nepali, Persian, Sinhalese, Spanish (Latin America), Swahili, Urdu, and Zulu.

You would have the option of switching the languages back and forth according to your whim and fancy, since most of these languages would also be supported by Drive’s spellchecker. Regardless of whether you are collaborating over the cloud with someone else on the different Drive apps available, including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms, you would still be able to work in real time in any language of your choice, while your fellow collaborators might be comfortable with another supported language. It would be interesting to see just how this is going to make working together across the cloud be more cohesive in the long run. [Press Release]

It seems that there is another game coming up which could very well sap your life as well as time, as you get involved in a virtual world while forgetting everything about the real world in the process. The time blackhole that I am referring to would be confirmation for The Sims 4, which is set to take to the stage this August 21 in terms of an official preview. Both Maxis and Electronic Arts have confirmed over Twitter that the world would be able to get the first actual look at The Sims 4 at gamescom, which so happens to kick off this coming August 21st.

The Sims 4 was first announced in early May, where Maxis did do their part to reassure fans of the franchise that The Sims 4 would be a true blue single-player, entirely offline experience. Hmmm, this is kind of ironic, especially when you consider how the entire Sims franchise was meant to let you live out a social lifestyle, and to play all alone while making friends with virtual avatars seem rather sad. Ah well, at least they don’t go around stabbing you in the back, and neither will there be rumor mongering among the other Sims.