Back2012: Games, gadgets and general geekdom
We saw lots of hopeful visions of the future, some practical and some a little crazy. In short, a great year for technology fans
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The launch of the iPad in 2010 was a huge event—it instantly emerged as the most important gadget of the year. And 2011 continued the trend with the iPad 2 and countless Android tablets being the most exciting hardware you would see. Gaming too was dominated by countless sequels with not enough original content coming through.
In the last 12 months, tablets remained exciting; laptops made a comeback, thanks to Windows 8; indie gaming had a bumper crop; and 4K TVs are actually already on the market. The year started well for Apple with the launch of the “new iPad" with retina display. Matters got confusing later in the year when another new iPad was launched along with the iPad Mini, leaving third generation buyers feeling a little cheated.
Intel continued to develop the ultrabook category but it also made a push for smartphones. India was one of the early markets to see their Medfield chip, in the Lava Xolo X900—it was a good phone in terms of price and performance but not in build. It didn’t really set the market on fire and neither did other Intel-powered smartphones, but things could turn around for them next year.
Big banner productions also continued to shatter all sorts of records—Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 crossed $1 billion ( ₹ 5,430 crore) in sales in just 15 days. It hit half-a-billion dollars in sales on the day it launched. That’s one day less than last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and two days less than Avatar (2009), which earned a $1 billion faster than any other movie so far. Does that make Call of Duty one of the better games this year? Not really. While you can’t help but wish that the game did more with its apparently limitless production budget, you’d have to be dead inside not to get a thrill out of it.
Halo 4 launched in November and while it didn’t set as many sales records, fans of the franchise who were worried about the quality of the game (since it was being made by a new developer), probably breathed a sigh of relief. In terms of narrative, it was much more ambitious than the earlier games—made by Bungie—and in terms of gameplay, things were tweaked so carefully that an inattentive player would not even have realized that he was playing a completely new game.
Stealth games made a comeback of sorts with a new Hitman: Absolutiongame and Assassin’s Creed IIIwith simplified stealth systems, along with the more immersive Dishonored. Kickstarter also proved that people want the classics again and many old school games got funded with millions of dollars on the crowd-funding website.
Meanwhile, Samsung followed up on the success of the Galaxy Note with the Note II, which was bigger but slimmer, and had a battery to put any of the competing smartphones to shame, while LG launched the 5-inch Optimus Vu. More recently, budget smartphones with the same form factor have also started to hit the Indian market, making Samsung’s vision of “phablets" a reality.
Apple followed this up with the launch of the iPad Mini. It was a major change in Apple’s stance on tablet sizes, and met with early criticism because it was priced at a significant premium to other 7-inch tablets, though the eventual launch was highly successful. Google also announced the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 phone and tablets, to complete their mobile offerings alongside the Nexus 7.
In the last week of October, Microsoft revealed the final version of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft deserves credit for the large-scale change and innovation that they are trying to drive with Windows 8, and for trying to integrate an ecosystem across tablets (Windows RT), computers (Windows 8), hybrids, mobile phones (Windows Phone 8) and TV (through the Xbox).
Still, devices like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga and the Dell XPS 12 Duo offered amazing experiences—Asus has also come up with some unique ideas such as the Taichi, which has two screens. The best thing about these hybrids though is that no one design is the “right" way to do it. Sliders, swivels, 360-degree hinges, two screens and detachable screens are all competing for our attention.
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Watchlist: 2013
A guide to the most exciting new technology that’s expected next year.
While we’ll probably see a lot more of the same stuff, there are a few genuinely exciting areas of development where we might see major new products.
uSmart TVs:Android-powered set-top boxes are becoming more common while the Apple TV (an actual TV, not the set-top box they already sell) could well be announced in 2013. Samsung, has made this a focus area, with gesture and voice-control built into the television.
uThe next Xbox and Playstation: Nintendo launched the Wii U in 2012 and it’s safe to assume that both Microsoft and Sony will have to follow suit next year, as ageing console hardware looks increasingly bad when compared to the same games on the PC.
u The Internet of things: Our gadgets are getting smarter, including thermostats and washing machines. “House of the future", as imagined by Disney, still seems far-fetched, but home automation and tablet-controlled toasters are steadily moving closer to reality.
uVirtual reality: There are a lot of factors which are pushing high-quality virtual reality headsets closer to consumer space and 2013 could be the year where it becomes cheap enough to build a good headset such as the Oculus Rift.
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