World of Warcraft is obviously popular, but a new infographic (See Below) reveals that it goes further than that – Azeroth’s population surpasses that of most countries.

Despite its slow decline in active subscribers, World of Warcraft is a pretty darn healthy MMO. Blizzard released an infographic today to celebrate the crossing of a threshold: since its release ten years ago, a whopping 100 million accounts have been created. That includes trial accounts, mind, but there’s no denying it’s an impressive census. In fact, it’s more than twice the entire population of South Korea, as the infographic happily points out.

All in all, Azeroth has a population of about 500 million player characters (an average of five per account, by our math), hailing from 244 countries and territories around the world. 52% of those characters are members of the Alliance, while 47% joined the Horde. Since Pandaren characters start out neutral, there’s also 1% of characters who are still on the fence.

It just goes to show that the glorious Alliance wins because of superior numbers. WOOHOO 😀

World of Warcraft’s economy is still booming as well. Every day sees about 2.8 million trades through the Auction House, which was twice the activity of eBay on Cyber Monday a few years ago. All that trade is handled by just 71 auctioneer NPCs in the game world, who each probably deserve a serious raise.

You can see the full infographic in all its glory over at Battle.net. There’s a lot of big numbers, and they’re well-earned; WoW has been more or less the reigning champion of MMOs for a full decade now. Azeroth still has over 7 million active players as of the last report, and something tells me that its community won’t be leaving it anytime soon.

Rumours by several sources suggest Apple may currently be working on a whole new set-top box as a successor to current Apple TV boxes, with updated hardware and software to support many more types of content and improve the slickness of the whole experience. But a separate report out today from iLounge says that Apple also plans to cater for the growing number of app developers and iOS users using the boxes as pseudo-game consoles, with plans to introduce native gaming support to the Apple TV, along with direct support for game controllers.

With Apple’s AirPlay technology allowing not just video and music, but also direct streaming of anything that happens on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch onto a TV Screen via an Apple TV box, many users have started taking advantage of the feature to show their small-screen games on TV while they play them on their iDevice. And with Apple allowing iOS app developers to build experiences that employ the Apple TV in specific ways; and iOS games taking advantage of this more and more to provide multi-screen gaming experiences (not unlike the Wii U combining TV and Gamepad), Apple TV is quickly turning into a games console in its own right – but there’s a problem. Streaming games from screen to screen adds a noticeable lag – around a tenth of a second – between the two devices, which for high-action gaming like shooters; or games that require fast reactions like racers, can completely kill the game play. Also, even for games with direct Apple TV support, using controllers other than the iDevice running the game requires those controllers to be paired with the device, not the Apple TV itself, introducing further lag.

Now though, it’s been suggested that Apple are looking into furthering the ability of Apple TV to play games, with sources such as iLounge claiming that planned software updates will introduce the ability to install games directly on the Apple TV box itself, as well as direct support for game controllers. 9to5Mac, who have a high level of accuracy regarding Apple rumours, claim knowledge that Apple may be planning to directly implement the Apple iStore into a future Apple TV refresh, lending some suggestion as to how the former may be achieved – but stop short of suggesting the updates are anything to do with gaming, instead suggesting the new hardware will be a refresh with a focus on improving the speed and user experience.

Apple have declined to comment on any of these rumours.

The current Apple TV last received a significant update in March, 2012, so it’s due for a refresh. Though no date for the supposed new Apple TV has yet been suggested – either by Apple or by rumourmongers – the suggestion from the latter is to expect a launch in Spring or Summer 2014. With Apple generally preferring Autumn for major announcements on the iPhone/iPad side of things these days, that timing would make a lot of sense as a way to keep up interest in Apple throughout the year.

(Due to the size of the screenshots, thumbnails have been used below. To see an image in full size, just click it)

It’s been a couple of months now since the crowd-funded game by Megaman creator Keiji Inafune smashed all records – and more then secured the release of spiritual successor, Mighty No. 9, on all current gen consoles and PC – and newly leaked screenshots have let us take a glance at the current status of the game’s development.

Keiji Inafune’s Comcept dev studio gave a peek at the Mighty No. 9 alpha build in images that only backers of its crowdfunding campaign can see – but you can never keep secrets from fans for very long; and those same images soon got out to the wider public. While clearly a lot of the screenshot contents are placeholder elements, they DO give a good look at the current character model design for No.9, and reveal a graphical style to the game that’s not unlike the Classic Stages of Sonic Generations.

Some have commented that the placeholder walls and other elements in the screenshots look similar to Unreal’s default elements, perhaps suggesting the game will be running a version of the Unreal Engine. Nothing’s been stated in this regard, but it WOULD be cool if so. We’ll have more news when it arrives!

So a new type of gaming headgear has just come out.

The headset from foc.us is the first wearable transcranial Direct Current Stimulation or tDCS. This device sends a low electrical current to your brain, improving brain power. This is achieved by 4 electrodes located at the front of the headset while the headset rest on the back of your head.

This headset claims to overclock your brain, improving your cognitive performance. The headset can be controlled manually by using either a touch sensor or your iPhone. Later models will include control via Android phones. Currently, you can only change whether it’s on or off, the mode or the current level with the app. There is no way to change the duration of the current.

This cool device will be sold $249 for US customers and £179 for UK customers and the rest of the world. They will ship to Canada, US, UK, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and continental Europe. It comes in two colours black and red.

If you want to check this cool headset for yourself head over to http://www.foc.us/.

A rumour has surfaced claiming that Nintendo is hard at work on its next generation of home and portable consoles, collectively known as “Fusion.”

An anonymous source claims that Nintendo, which is reeling after an absolutely disastrous year, is working on the successor to the much-maligned WiiU. Called Nintendo Fusion, it’s a collective name for Nintendo’s next generation of both the home and portable consoles.

Nintendo actually purchased the nintendofusion.com domain in 2003 in support of the Nintendo Fusion Tour, a rock and video game music festival that ran for four years, but it has since gone dormant. And while news that Nintendo isn’t just watching its money evaporate is not in itself remarkable, it is noteworthy that there are actual “possible” specifications for the hardware, suggesting that development is relatively far along.

Fusion DS:

CPU: ARMv8-A Cortex-A53 GPU: Custom Adreno 420-based AMD GPU
COM MEMORY: 3 GB LPDDR3 (2 GB Games, 1 GB OS)
2 130 mm DVGA (960 x 640) Capacitive Touchscreen
Slide Out Design with Custom Swivel Tilt Hinge
Upper Screen made of Gorilla Glass, Comes with Magnetic Cover
Low End Vibration for Gameplay and App Alerts
2 Motorized Circle Pads for Haptic Feedback
Thumbprint Security Scanner with Pulse Sensing Feedback
2 1mp Stereoptic Cameras
Multi-Array Microphone
A, B, X, Y, D-Pad, L, R, 1, 2 Buttons
3 Axis Tuning Fork Gyroscope, 3 Axis Accelerometer, Magnetometer
NFC Reader
3G Chip with GPS Location
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE Command Node used to Interface with Bluetooth Devices such as Cell Phones, Tablets
16 Gigabytes of Internal Flash Storage (Possible Future Unit With 32 Gigabytes)
Nintendo 3DS Cart Slot
SDHC “Holographic Enhanced” Card Slot up to 128 Gigabyte Limit
Mini USB I/O
3300 mAh Li-Ion battery

Fusion Terminal:

GPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAMED KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
802.11 b/g/n Wireless
Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
2 USB 3.0
1 Coaxial Cable Input
1 CableCARD Slot
4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads
Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot
1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage

Nintendo News claims it has an “impeccable reputation” with regard to rumours but also notes that none of this is substantiated and is subject to change and/or outright denial at any time. And while it’s only been a little over a year since the WiiU was released, it’s been such an unmitigated disaster that I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo is in a rush to get a successor out the door. Whether or not it will do anything to restore its credibility is another matter entirely, but at this point, anything is better than nothing.

Source: Nintendo News