Gaming

The PlayStation Vita is expected to last for around three to five hours of battery life while playing games, and that's just not enough. If you're on a long flight, stuck in a boring movie, or suffering from an extreme bout of the stomach flu, you're going to want more juice. Nyko has you covered with its upcoming external battery.

The peripheral connects directly to the system without needing any installation, and should provide you with up to three times the amount of power as the stock battery. The grips you see in the render are retractable, allowing you to play with or without the dual-shock style appendages.

Sadly, I wasn't able to see a working unit, and we were told to expect the peripheral in March or April, so you're going to have to wait a bit after launch if you want to play for extended periods of time without plugging the Vita into a wall socket. We're huge fans of the Nyko battery that made the 3DS tolerable on the go, so we can't wait to see what the final version of this accessory looks like. If it's half as good as the 3DS version, the add-on will be a necessity, not an option.

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Mad Catz is releasing a new version of its popular fight sticks for Street Fighter X Tekken. I had a chance to play with the new design, and to see its very special—and oddly specific—killer feature: you can link multiple sticks together to recreate the arcade experience.

Razer is a company that isn't afraid to take risks. The upcoming Blade is a $2,800 piece of hardware that's gambling on the idea that gamers are looking for an ultra-premium gaming laptop, and we'll have some thoughts on our hands-on time with that hardware later. But we're here to talk about the brand-new concept device it showed off at CES this year, and it's a doozy.

The Project Fiona is a gaming PC that takes the tablet form factor and adds controls on either side of the screen. Combine that with internal components that will allow all modern PC games to run and a projected sub-$1,000 price point, and you have a system that is like nothing else we've seen, for better or worse.

It's a little unnerving to be sitting in a room with four Nintendo representatives looking at you, along with one of the most mysterious upcoming pieces of hardware in the business. There were multiple Wii U consoles in the room, each one complete with the innovative controller that looks like the love child of a standard gaming peripheral and an iPad. I was told that Nintendo wouldn't be showing me anything new at CES; all the game demos I would be playing were already shown at E3.

I could ask questions, of course, but I quickly realized doing so would be a waste of time.

Mad Catz has done some interesting things in the world of console controllers, but the just-released $99.99 MLG controller may be the apex of what can be done with third-party peripherals…even if the company quietly claims that this controller does many things better than the first party options. By giving the player the ability to mod the controller at will, people who have always wanted to game in specific ways will finally have those wishes granted.

Razer has unveiled a new device concept called Project Fiona, which combines elements of a PC and a tablet into a single, unique gaming platform.

Unveiled at CES, the device features an Intel Core i7 processor and is designed to run higher-end PC games. A teaser trailer from Razer shows Project Fiona running games like Firefall and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. According to the company, the tablet runs "many" PC games natively, eliminating the need for developers to port games.

After a trip to visit family in Iran last August, an Iranian-American citizen was arrested for and convicted of espionage and has since been sentenced to death. A former US Marine born in Flagstaff, Arizona, Amir Mizra Hekmati now has 20 days to appeal the verdict or the decision will be final. His family has since hired a lawyer with experience in negotiating with the government of Iran, and he is currently attempting to meet with Iranian officials.

Hemkati's crime? Developing a video game critical of Iran.

A console version of the much-anticipated Diablo 3 has been rumored for quite some time, due in no small part to developer Blizzard admitting back in September that it was experimenting with a console version of the game. Now, according to a tweet from a Blizzard community manager, it looks like Diablo 3 on consoles is all but confirmed.

In response to an inquiry from a fan via Twitter, which asked simply "can you confirm or deny Diablo 3 coming to consoles?" community manager "Bashiok" responded "Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project." More specific details have yet to be announced.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mosqueira has been working as a lead game designer at Blizzard since last May, and prior to that worked on the unreleased Far Cry 3 at Ubisoft and served as a lead designer on games like Company of Heroes and Homeworld 2 at Relic. When Blizzard first revealed that it was looking at bringing the role playing game to consoles, director Jay Wilson said that the game actually felt better in some ways with a controller, as opposed to a mouse and keyboard.

"One of the reasons why we're exploring the idea of a console version of Diablo 3 is because we feel that the controls and the style of the game lend itself to a console," he said. "With some of our early experiments in putting a direct control scheme into the game via a 360-like analogue controller, I've [thought] 'Oh this feels even better, with direct control...'"

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