By and large, EA Sports’ Season Opener event here at GDC was underwhelming, but one glimmer of newness did manage to shine through. Nearly a year after Active hit stores (video after the break) and encouraged Wii gamers to drop those unwanted pounds before hitting the soft sand in the summer, the company has announced that Active 2.0 (a working title) is currently in development for Wii, PS3, iPod touch and iPhone. We’re told that a “new suite of fitness products” will be launching in the fall, with the Active 2.0 program delivering “true fitness results by featuring an innovative wireless control system powered by new leg and arm straps with motion sensors, a heart rate monitor to capture intensity and a new online hub to track and share workout data.” Outside of that, details are nonexistent (like how exactly the iPod / iPhone components will factor into this equation), though we get the feeling that Xbox 360 owners may be left out of the party. Here’s hoping we’re wrong. Gallery: EA Sports Active 2.0 accessories at GDC 2010 Continue reading EA Sports introduces Active 2.0 at GDC, complete with sensors galore EA Sports introduces Active 2.0 at GDC, complete with sensors galore originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:04:00 EST.

If you’re a Mac user, you may not know about Steam. By Valve (makers of Half-Life and L4D) it’s the greatest game distribution service in existence—like an iTunes for PC games. Now, it could be coming to Macs. In Steam’s latest beta release, a search through its files revealed a number of OSX-specific assets, like a Steam dock icon (among loads of others). Since there’s no reason for OSX resources—that I should add, are specifically labeled “OSX”—to make their way into a PC product, it seems pretty certain that, yes, Steam is coming to Mac

Nokia’s just announced a 16GB version of its crowd pleasing, capacitive touchscreen X6 to compliment the current 32GB model . As expected, the new handset offers many similarities to its sibling, including a 3.2-inch widescreen capacitive display and 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics and a dual LED flash. Unfortunately, this device is Comes with Music-deficient, meaning that you’ll have to load tunes onto the device the old fashioned way (though it’s not like that ever seemed like a big deal to begin with). In addition to EA’s Spore, this bad boy includes Asphalt4 and DJ Mix Tour by Gameloft and an all-new Ovi Maps (with free walk and drive navigation, Michelin and Lonely Planet guides).

While Palm’s Pre is many things to many people it still can’t game. Oh sure, it’ll play Magic Fortune Ball like a champ but when it comes to intensive 3D action the Pre is as helpless as a would-be terrorist trying to ignite his underwear. See, webOS and the Mojo SDK currently can’t exploit the GPU the way other smartphone platforms can. Rewind a few weeks, however, and we’re reminded of a video showing EA’s Need for Speed Undercover running impossibly smooth on a Pre. At the time, the video and claims of the device running Flash were shot down as fake largely due to the accompanying screen caps of the purportedly new App Catalog. Well guess what?

We never heard much more of the rumored Sphere codename for Sony’s PlayStation 3 motion controller since it cropped up a few months ago, but it looks like we now finally have another name for it besides “PlayStation Motion Controller.” That word initially came from EA’s John Riccitiello, who let slip the name “Gem” during his talk at the UBS 37th Annual Global Media Conference when speaking about Sony’s and Microsoft’s new motion controllers. Just odd enough to work? Well, not so fast, as Sony would only go so far as to confirm to Kotaku that Gem was “an early code name for the product,” adding that they “haven’t announced final name at this point.” Not exactly a full-on non-denial denial, to be sure, but it would seem that the door for Gem is at least open a tiny crack. [Thanks, Aaron] Sony says PS3 motion controller was codenamed ‘Gem,’ might or might not actually be called Gem originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

We never heard much more of the rumored Sphere codename for Sony’s PlayStation 3 motion controller since it cropped up a few months ago, but it looks like we now finally have another name for it besides “PlayStation Motion Controller.” That word initially came from EA’s John Riccitiello, who let slip the name “Gem” during his talk at the UBS 37th Annual Global Media Conference when speaking about Sony’s and Microsoft’s new motion controllers. Just odd enough to work? Well, not so fast, as Sony would only go so far as to confirm to Kotaku that Gem was “an early code name for the product,” adding that they “haven’t announced final name at this point.” Not exactly a full-on non-denial denial, to be sure, but it would seem that the door for Gem is at least open a tiny crack. [Thanks, Aaron] Sony says PS3 motion controller was codenamed ‘Gem,’ might or might not actually be called Gem originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Need more evidence that physical media is inching towards the door? Enter this Reuters conversation with Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello. While the company — the largest publisher of “interactive entertainment” (AKA video games) — is hurting on sales during the awesome global recession currently underway, he thinks the future is digital. All digital.

It’s unclear how well Command & Conquer Red Alert is going to translate, control-wise, to the iPhone’s touchscreen, but the graphics in these screenshots aren’t half bad. They’re not up to par in today’s console or PC graphics, but they do look about the same as what I remember in the first few C&C games in the ’90s—which isn’t all that shabby. No exact release date yet, but it will launch in October and it will have 12 levels to play through, and two maps for skirmish mode. [ Kotaku ]

Electronic Arts knows that we can’t wait to get our Tetris fix on the Palm Pre , so instead of making us wait until the October release of Tetris Mania , they’ve released a thirty second demo. A thirty-freakin’-second demo. Some of us managed to survive boring high school math lessons by playing Tetris on TI-89 calculators, yet we can’t get more than 30 seconds on a Pre for another month? I understand that it’s a demo, and that by now everyone and their dog knows how to play Tetris, but this doesn’t even qualify as a teaser.

Yes, EA’s most popular sports games are coming to the iPhone. You know what that means: similar gameplay, unusable controls. I can’t wait! [ PocketGamer via Kotaku ]