Fully Charged: Xbox One price drop, Nexus 7 on the way out, and Flappy Bird to return?
All the tech news worth reading, squeezed together on one page
Xbox One price chopped to £350
One UK retailer has dropped its Xbox One price to £350, bringing Microsoft’s console in line (on price, at least) with the PlayStation 4. The retailer in question is Maplin, who is also selling an Xbox One FIFA 14 bundle for £380 – £70 less than its old price. You can buy the consoles here.
READ MORE: Microsoft Xbox One review
BBC updates iPlayer
The BBC has given iPlayer a major revamp and announced that it will include a raft of new online-only programming aimed at “a BBC Three audience”. BBC Three is to be scrapped – and the Beeb sees iPlayer as the perfect replacement as a platform for showcasing new talent.
The new-look iPlayer, meanwhile, has a layout that adapts to the device it’s being used on. It also features more recommendations in order to cater for viewers who fire it up with no particular show in mind, as well as a new “Collections” section that highlights older archive programmes. The idea, it seems, is to begin transforming iPlayer from a catch-up service to a full-blooded on-demand platform like Netflix.
[Source: BBC]
Flappy Bird creator “considering bringing it back”
Flappy Bird just won’t die. When creator Dong Nguyen withdrew the maddeningly addictive game from app stores, thousands of clones popped up to replace it. And now Nguyen has admitted that he’s considering bringing it back (why, Dong, why?). The Vietnamese 28-year-old, who is still making huge amounts of money from in-game advertising (people who had downloaded the game before its withdrawal can still play it), told Rolling Stone that he’s feeling a little more comfortable with his new-found fame and, as a consequence, may bring it back. But if he does, he promises it will come with a warning: “Please take a break.”
[Source: Rolling Stone]
No more Nexus 7 for Google?
Word on the street (or rather the internet) is that Google is set to kill of its Nexus 7 line of tablets, but don’t worry, slate-lovers – the company is going to replace it with a Nexus 8.
The rumour says that Google will unveil an 8in Nexus tablet later this year, timing the launch to coincide with the release of Android 4.5. There’s also talk that this tablet will feature an all-new Intel Atom processor dubbed “Moorfield”, which is both quad-core and 64-bit compatible. There’s no word yet on which company might build the device in partnership with Google; the past two Nexus 7s have been manufactured by Asus.
[Source: TechEye]
READ MORE: Google Nexus 7 review