Tag Archives: console

The Humble Origata Collection Is Inspired By The Fascinating Art Of Kimono Making

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A minimal and beautifully designed piece of furniture can truly make a room come full circle. It can be the final piece that completes a space, building a comfortable and cohesive haven, rather than a random area. Furniture pieces make or break a home, they add to the essence or soul of a home, hence one needs to be extremely picky while choosing a furniture design. The design should be a reflection of you, and what you want your home to be. When you place a piece of furniture in a room, it should instantly integrate with the space, creating a wholesome and organic environment. And, a minimal furniture collection that would be an amazing addition to your home is the Origata collection by Nao Tamura for Porro.

Designer: Nao Tamura for Porro

Designed by New York-based Japanese designer Nao Tamura, the Origata collection includes the Origata bench and console. They’re inspired by the intricate craft of Kimono making and were designed for the Italian furniture brand Porro. The furniture pieces are crafted from aluminum sheet material, which has been cut and assembled using techniques inspired by the art of kimono making, in which fabric is cut in straight lines, and then artfully sewn together.

This unique technique produces almost zero waste, which is why Tamura employed this clever process, since it maximizes material use, in turn boosting the production of his collection. Both the Origata bench and console feature the same essential shape – a sturdy geometric form that has a softness to it, owing to its cultural influences, and craft-related inspiration.

The beautiful pieces represent and showcase Porro and Tamura’s shared values which include cultural identity, internationality, and a genuine respect and admiration for materials. The various pieces make an excellent fit for entryways, waiting rooms, or even bedrooms. They are versatile furniture designs that can also be employed and placed in areas for work, writing, and meditation. Where would you want to place these pieces?

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This $149 gadget is a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ for livestreamers, gamers, and designers

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The Live S arrives as Loupedeck’s first product since its acquisition by Logitech. Designed to be the smallest of the company’s streaming consoles, the Loupedeck Live S is an affordable gadget for the on-the-go livestreamer or someone looking to dip their toe into streaming, content creation, or design. With 15 haptic display buttons, 4 RGB buttons, 2 rotary knobs, and a rather affordable $149 price tag, the customizable control center is perfect for multitaskers looking to boost their productivity, or streamers/podcasters who want everything right at their fingertips.

Designer: Loupedeck

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At its core, the Loupedeck Live S is a streamlined version of its predecessors, featuring two tactile analog knobs, four physical buttons, and 15 touch-sensitive LCD squares. These elements provide a tactile and responsive experience, allowing users to adjust settings like volume, switch scenes, and toggle functions with ease and precision. The touch-sensitive buttons, although lacking physical feedback, confirm every touch with haptic feedback, enhancing the user experience.

The device, slightly larger than a typical cellphone, is compact enough to fit comfortably on any desk. Its stand, snapping securely onto the back, props it up at a convenient angle for easy access. Buttons with individual displays dynamically light up to let you know which shortcut or application they’re assigned to. The display built into each button means easily being able to switch between applications, shortcuts, and environments and having the Loupedeck adapt to the moment.

Setting up the Live S is straightforward: plug in, install the software, and you’re ready to dive into its functionalities. The graphical user interface is simple yet powerful, allowing easy drag-and-drop customization. Users can set multiple profiles and workspaces, and the device seamlessly transitions between these based on the selected application. The Loupedeck Live S supports a plethora of native plugins for popular software like OBS, Twitch, Spotify, and a range of Adobe products. Beyond these, users can also create or import custom profiles and icons for virtually any application or game, making it a highly adaptable tool for a variety of tasks.

While its primary market is streamers and content creators, the Loupedeck Live S has proven its worth in other domains. It’s been lauded for its usefulness in enhancing productivity, especially in work-from-home setups, offering quick access to frequently used functions and applications. This versatility extends to gaming and other entertainment applications, with users able to tailor the device to their specific needs.

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Analogue Duo console revives TurboGrafx cartridges and CDs with a catch

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The retro gaming craze has given birth to many console revivals, but some of them are walking on legally gray areas. The officially sanctioned devices bear licensed titles but in very small numbers. Third-party recreations that use emulators, on the other hand, offer more freedom and flexibility but you’ll have to be creative in where you source your games. And then there’s the rare middle ground that puts those old games in fresh new hardware, like this curious console that pays tribute to the oft-forgotten NEC TurboGrafx. Unlike other retro consoles, however, it doesn’t come bundled with its own games and you’ll have to bring your own cartridges and discs, presuming you still have some of those around.

Designer: Analogue

With the explosion of home gaming systems in the late 80s to early 90s, it wasn’t much of a surprise that some brands would be pushed to the background. Although it did have a faithful following, the NEC TurboGrafx system eventually faded into history, only to be remembered with retro consoles and devices such as the Analogue Duo. It’s not a simple recreation of the original console, however. In fact, it looks nothing like the TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine consoles. What this new console brings, instead, is a way to be able to use those original game cartridges and CDs just the way they were meant to.

Retro mini consoles like the NES and SNES Classics practically use emulation software to run digital copies of games that used to exist on physical media. That’s definitely convenient but also removes the gratification of experiencing those classic titles from the cartridges or CDs they came from. Without going into technical details, the Analogue Duo claims to use no emulation at all and uses hardware engineered for thousands of hours to offer compatibility with a wide range of NEC gaming systems and media, including those for the TurboGrafx-16, PC Engine, SuperGrafx, TurboGrafx CD, PC Engine CD-ROM, and Super Arcade CD-ROM.

The design of the Analogue Duo itself is also quite unique, eschewing the trend of copying the appearance of the original consoles. It does lie horizontally like most consoles, but its modern and sleek appearance clearly tells which century it comes from. An odd and rather interesting detail is the wavy rear of the console, something you won’t find on any gaming hardware today. Interestingly, you can place two of these consoles back-to-back with those waves intersecting with each other.

The Analogue Duo is pretty ambitious in its goals, which is probably why it took three years for it to finally become available. Even then, it will be in extremely limited supply, available first to those who pre-ordered back in May. Perhaps it’s for the best so that TurboGrafx fans will be able to bide their time and see whether the console will be able to deliver that faithful classic experience it promised.

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PlayStation-inspired foldable console is the all-in-one entertainment system everyone deserves

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The video gaming landscape in the past years has changed considerably. We’re seeing a rise in “portable PCs” designed specifically for gaming purposes, while traditional consoles have become as powerful as or even more powerful than our desktop computers. For all intents and purposes, these home gaming machines can meet almost all our digital entertainment needs, though they have one design peculiarity that makes them a little less convenient for that. Most gaming consoles need to be hooked up to a display and a speaker, which puts some limits on how and where you can use them. That’s why there have been both concepts and actual mods that transform consoles into more standalone and sometimes even portable entertainment machines, but this PlayStation Capsule definitely takes the cake by mashing gaming, video, and audio entertainment together in a single, innovative form.

Designer: Alisher Ashimov

Right off the bat, this machine looks like no other console, not even those modded consoles that masquerade as very hefty suitcases. The foldable pyramid form might look alien to most people today, but more seasoned designers and tech pundits might be familiar with the JVC Video Capsule from 1978. Similar to that vintage appliance, the PlayStation Capsule concept encapsulates, pardon the pun, everything you’d need to immerse yourself in your favorite digital content. You don’t even need to plug anything in, except the PlayStation controllers, of course.

When the capsule is closed and the pyramid is whole, the device functions as an eye-catching speaker, a refreshing break from the cylinders and rectangles of today’s breed. Beyond just the unique shape and 360-degree audio, however, the PlayStation Capsule’s most notable feature in this Speaker Mode is its controls on its front. It has a touchscreen panel that acts both as a way to display visuals like album art as well as an interface for the speaker’s functions. That said, the capsule also features two physical knobs that give better tactile feedback and pay homage to the physical dials of the video capsule of old.

Swing the top upward, and you’ve switched to Console Mode, which can also be Video Mode if binge streaming is the name of your game. It reveals an integrated display so that you can start gaming or watching right then and there, removing the middle man of navigating the TV first. What makes the PlayStation Console special is the built-in mechanical keyboard, the type that gamers love for their tactile feedback and sound, as well as a MacBook-like Touch Bar for instant access to often-used functions. This is especially useful for games that require you to chat with others or to quickly toggle features on or off without having to dig through menus.

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Although it’s not something you’d carry with you on your travels, the PlayStation Capsule’s compact and integrated design still makes it portable to some extent. It doesn’t prevent you from hooking it up to a larger TV or more powerful speakers, but it can also function completely on its own when the circumstances call for it. More importantly, it gives the gaming console a striking and memorable design, one that looks to the future while paying respects to past innovations and creativity.

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Thor Love And Thunder Xbox Mod Turns Console Into Mjölnir

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To promote the release of Marvel Studios’ Thor: Love and Thunder on July 8th, Microsoft is giving one lucky winner a custom Xbox Series X that looks like Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, complete with handle and everything. Don’t even bother entering, because it will be mine.

I shouldn’t be telling you this if I want to win, but all you have to do to enter the contest is follow Microsoft’s Twitter account and retweet the announcement with the hashtag #ThorLoveandThunderXboxSweepstakes. That’s a long hashtag. I would have suggested they go with #hammeryourXbox instead, but they didn’t ask me.

Would that even fit on my entertainment stand? Probably not. At least not without sawing the handle off first, which is likely considered sacrilege. Plus, I’ll probably never even be able to lift it onto the stand, considering how unworthy I am to wield Mjölnir in the first place. I think about these things.

[via TechEBlog]

GameCube Advance brings a fantasy gaming handheld to life

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The Nintendo Switch might be the company’s latest darling, but Nintendo has had consoles that become iconic in their own right during their lifetime. The Game Boy’s name is probably unchallenged, but the GameCube is definitely up there in the annals of gaming history. Remembered for being the first Nintendo console to use an optical disc instead of a cartridge, many GameCube fans have sought to revive the home console’s name today. One modder definitely succeeds in that goal by not only making the GameCube relevant but by also giving life to a popular fake version of the console that made rounds over the Internet more than a decade ago.

Designer: GingerOfOz

In 2005, right at the height of the GameCube’s popularity, a pair of renders sparked the interest of gamers and Nintendo fans. It was that of a portable version of the console that folded in a clamshell form, just like the Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP handheld that was launched around that time as well. In those days, Nintendo had no intentions of creating a portable version of a powerful home console, predating the creation of the Switch by more than ten years.

Someone finally tired of looking at fakes and dreaming of what could have been and made an effort to actually make this GameBoy Advance a reality. Thanks to the tools and services available even to hobbyists these days, that’s no longer an impossibility. That said, it wasn’t simply a matter of gluing pieces together, as the modder discovered the hard way.

The 2005 images, although quite attractive, were nothing but a work of fiction that couldn’t even translate into reality. The size of the hardware needed to support a GameCube disc would have made the handheld too large. The buttons, which were naturally patterned after the GameCube’s controller, would have also made it impossible to close the console shut.

In the end, GingerOfOz had to take liberties in how he implemented the design while at least sticking true to the form of the fake render. He even had to use a Wii’s internals instead of a GameCube in order to save space and reduce the device’s power consumption. And, of course, there was no optical disc drive.

The end result, however, was still a masterwork, especially since it could actually play GameCube titles with the ease and portability of a chunky Game Boy Advance. There are some limitations, of course, not to mention potential legal pitfalls with this mod, but there is an undeniable sense of satisfaction in finally making a long-standing dream a reality.

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This side table console is a simple + elegant + functional furniture for studio apartments

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A side table that doubles as a stool or space to store your books and other props – giving a whole new dimension to multi-functional, compact and lightweight furniture just perfect for your minimalist home.

How often have you come across a piece of multifunctional furniture that is either too bulky or the intended functions turn out to be not so useful in day-to-day usage? Minimalism is the name of the game these days in modern homes which are so much space constricted. On top of that, a compact piece of furniture catering to a plethora of needs is most wanted for studio apartments where every inch of available space matters. A perfect scenario for O Side Table to make a statement in the home furnishing space where the options are virtually limitless.

The table and console combo thought of by Mudu Design is designed with the vision of interaction with home furniture in more than one way. This multifunctional side table seems like any ordinary piece of a furniture item – but that’s where the similarity ends. Not only is it a side table, but a sturdy stool, storage unit for magazines and much more depending on your creativity. Plus, the easy-to-carry aesthetics make this side table highly maneuverable depending on the needs in a jiffy.

The designer Rostyk Sorokovyi’s obsession with round shapes is evident in the side table crafted out of natural wood. This choice is not just random but based on the fact that the circle is the most harmonious shape nature has bestowed us with. The furniture piece comes in classy black and natural wood color options – expanding the choice for picky users.

Designer: Rostyk Sorokovyi of Mudu Design

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Oneplus’ $15 wireless Gaming Triggers turn your Android smartphone into a Nintendo Switch

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Good News: They work with Android as well as iOS devices. Bad News: They’re currently only being sold in India.

The Gaming Triggers from OnePlus dropped randomly out of the blue when company CEO Pete Lau tweeted about them. According to Lau, they’re solid, responsive, and pleasingly clicky – and they’re built to work with any smartphone (regardless of their make), because “the best product design is one that leaves you free to make your own choices.”

The Gaming Triggers work like an extra set of fingers. Hit the trigger and a plunger taps a part of your screen. Designed to sit on the upper edge of your smartphone as you game in landscape mode, the triggers are specifically targeted towards players of Battle Royale-style multiplayer mobile games including PUBG, Call of Duty, Free Fire, although mounting and using the triggers sacrifices a small portion of screen estate as they physically cover your smartphone display.

The OnePLus Gaming Triggers’ price point is exceedingly low for most gaming hardware (even mobile ones), although that’s purely because they’re completely analog and have no electronics on the inside (instead, they have capacitive pads that tap on your screen when triggered). This also makes them compatible with any touchscreen device including your Android smartphone, iPhone, and even your iPad, as long as the device in question is under 11.5mm in thickness (case included).

The triggers can be independently placed on any side of the phone, and they come with a bilaterally symmetric design. Depending on your on-screen buttons, you can distribute them on the left or right, or use them both on one side of the phone. They can be used in portrait mode too, although the ergonomics of that arrangement is really up to the user.
Fun Fact: You could potentially even use them to activate your camera shutter, giving you a real, tactile camera button that’s much easier to press instead of awkwardly tapping your smartphone display with your thumb.

The tactile capacitive buttons work remarkably fast, offering zero lag as compared to wireless controls. OnePlus uses industry-leading Omron switches inside the Gaming Triggers, providing users with that reliable clicking sound and much better tactile feedback as they play. The switches themselves are made from a Zinc alloy, for that cool metallic touch, and they sit within a PolyCarbonate enclosure for that rugged, long-lasting build quality. Sadly, the triggers are only available to customers in India through the OnePlus website for a price of 1,099 rupees (a little under $15). OnePlus hasn’t really mentioned anything about global availability yet.

Designer: OnePlus

Xbox test brings Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser to consoles

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You might finally have a good reason to use the web browser on your console for more than the bare necessities. The Verge reports that Microsoft has started testing a version of its Chromium-based Edge browser on the Xbox One and Series X/S. Particip...