Can Rovio achieve the impossible and make a good movie spin-off game?

The Croods is Rovio's latest mobile outing

Rovio's continued efforts to transcend Angry Birds will continue on March 14 with the launch of The Croods for Android and iOS.

The Finnish developer has buddied-up with Dreamworks Animation to promote the 3D animated movie of the same name, which comes out a week later on March 22.

The Croods, starring Nicolas Cage (reason enough alone to go and see it), Ryan Reynolds and Emma Stone charts the adventures of a sheltered prehistoric family who're forced to explore the world when their cave haven is destroyed.

The game will task players with re-building a village, hunting and gathering and catching 'crazy creatures' in order to level-up characters.

Begging for it

Petri Järvilehto, EVP of Games at Rovio Entertainment, said: "DreamWorks Animation's The Croods is filled with wonderful characters and creatures in an incredibly detailed, inventive world — it was just begging for its very own mobile game!"

This all sounds great doesn't it? But can Rovio achieve the seemingly impossible and release a movie tie-in game that's actually worth playing?

We'll find out on March 14. Meanwhile, check out the trailer below.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/can-rovio-achieve-the-impossible-and-make-a-good-movie-spin-off-game-1134959

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HTC: 'Using widgets and constantly customising homescreens is so 2010'

HTC says BlinkFeed brings us into a post-widget world

HTC revamped its Sense UI after learning that most smartphone owners rarely use widgets and barely bother to customise their homescreens after the first month of tweaking.

The Taiwanese company launched version 5 of its popular Sense UI last month, alongside the stunning HTC One handset, which offered a fresh new feel for the first time in a number of years.

In a blog post entitled 'Redefining HTC Sense' the company's Assistant Vice President of User Experience Drew Bamford said the company listened to customer feedback and became 'students of human behavior,' when preparing the new version.

According to Bamford, the findings showed many users do no differentiate between apps and widgets and, beyond live items like the Weather, Clock and Music, widgets are employed by less than 10 per cent of users.

Homescreens remain largely untouched

Bamford also said that after the first month of perfecting and tweaking, 80 per cent of folks do not continue to customise their homescreen layout.

The findings allowed the company to re-envision the information presented on the phone's landing page, which brought about the idea for the BlinkFeed interface, which presents a host of continually updating information from social networks and news feeds, similar to the Flipboard digital magazine application.

Bamford wrote: "The goal of creating a user experience that supports how most of you consume information, led us to BlinkFeed.

"Now, every time you power on your new HTC One you'll see fresh content – whether it is from your friends, your social feeds, or our premier content partners – that is uniquely relevant to you."

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/software/operating-systems/htc-using-widgets-and-constantly-customising-homescreens-is-so-2010-1134955

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