The Asphalt 8 Airborne Android and iOS apps have just received an update that brings new game improvements and changes to this hugely popular game. 

The arcade racing game features luxury cars and exotic locations and these latest additions to the game are likely to be a big hit with fans.

The changes include a new Asian-inspired racing location dubbed the Great Wall, which offers 6 new tracks to enjoy and celebrates the Year of the Horse. 

The iOS version also includes a new Twitch live streaming broadcasting feature. This enables users to connect with others in the Asphalt community via Twitch.tv to share gameplay, stunts and check out the skills of rivals.

There are also new cars on the way that will include the Ferrari Testarossa, 2014 McLaren P1, Dodge Challenger and 2014 Ford F-150. If you haven’t yet downloaded this free app you can get Asphalt 8: Airborne for Android devices at Google Play, or the iOS version for iPhone and iPad at the App Store.

Mark Shuttleworth who is the CEO of Canonical has revealed more about the upcoming Linux-based smartphones.

The Ubuntu mobile operating system is set to cost between $200 - $400. The Canonical Supremo said the devices are set to come in at a mid to higher range in terms of pricing.

"We're going with the higher end because we want people who are looking for a very sharp, beautiful experience and because our ambition is to be selling the future PC, the future personal computing engine."

 The smartphone project wants to produce something that can act as a smartphone and can also work as a PC when the item has been plugged into a monitor. Shuttleworth said this is something that audiences found to be attractive.

Canonical has teamed up with Meizu and BQ, companies that are smartphone makers, in order to create the device. This followed what Shuttleworth said was a spectacular failure to raise $32m to build the Ubuntu Edge Smartphone. He also called it a success though in terms of the amount of attention that it brought to the project and the effect that it could have on the industry as a whole.

He said that the firm is not targeting users of Apple products who he feels have an emotional connection to the Apple ecosystem of products. Instead they are targeting Android users. Shuttleworth believes that Android initially wasn’t built to be a personal computer so they have an advantage of starting late and really taking their time and thinking about it deeply before getting it going.

"I think as people get more and more excited about having a personal computing device that can be a TV or a piece of wearable computing, they'll be more excited about being part of Ubuntu's mobile story.”

Android has served its purpose for sure, but perhaps it's time for something new. If you really look at the heart of Google's business model I don't think it totally depends on Android, because they have great services."

The firm is looking to get the phones on sale this coming fall. We will see then if this new type of smartphone can gain any traction in this already saturated market.

Please leave us a comment below and we will get back to you.

The good thing about having an Android smartphone or tablet is that you can personalize every nook and cranny imaginable. For those who don’t want to mess around with rooting, modding andcustom ROMs, you can easily install free apps from the Google Play Store to change your wallpapers, ringtones and other awesome things. Here are the apps that we like for giving your smartphone a new personal touch.

mobile9

mobile9 is the bread and butter of ''wallpaper, ringtones and more'' apps and it just received a nice update bringing a new UI, content feed and other nice additions to the overall user experience. The app supplies themes for all the most common launchers, like Go Launcher and Apex, wallpapers (HD and live ones), ringtones to use for the various noises on your Android, videos to stay entertained, special occasion messages to send to your friends and chat stickers for when you get bored of the normal ones!

mobile9 ringtones & wallpapersINSTALL

Zedge

Again, this is a behemoth of an app, providing a huge array of various wallpapers, both HD and live options, as well as ringtones. There are over 300 million different ones, so you won’t have to use the same ones twice. Ringtones can be set for individual contacts, and wallpapers are optimized to match your screen size. It also comes with a widget in which you plop all of your games in one organized and customizable area.

ZEDGE™ Ringtones & WallpapersINSTALL

PolyFauna

Now from super massive databases of wallpapers, we are shrinking the scope down to bring you one very unique and weirdly beautiful app which was made in collaboration with the band Radiohead and Universal Everything. The images you see on the wallpaper are ones that come from the music video Bloom by the band. The live and interactive wallpaper plunges you into a new surreal world that is certainly really unique.

PolyFaunaINSTALL

Mountains Now Free Wallpaper

This is another artsy-fartsy live wallpaper that screams serenity now. Basically, it takes after the Google Now mountain theme where you watch boats travel along the river in front of some mountains. Using the gyroscope, the wallpaper puts to use the 3D parallax effect, which makes various parts of an image on one screen move at different speeds to create an interesting optical effect, a common Google design trait. The app is supported on tablets as well.

Mountains Now Free WallpaperINSTALL

Dragon Strike FREE Wallpaper

Finally, the tiny nerd inside me made me add this to the list. Dragon Strike FREE Wallpaper, might use a lot of your battery, but for such cool imagery, it’s nice to have it on your phone for a while, even if it means charging more often. The virtual dragons move around at random, they attack castles and have varying powers per breed. The dragon battles happen when you least expect it, so there’s always a surprise around the corner. This all happens in both portrait and landscape mode, switching automatically to follow the action, depending on the orientation of your phone. There’s also background battle music or natural sounds.

Dragon Strike FREE WallpaperINSTALL

If you can suggest an equally cool life wallpaper or source, then please do so in the comments below!

Dr Katie Hall is developing ways to transfer power without wires. As part of a crude experiment, she filled a tiny room with gigantic copper refigerator coils. In the middle of the room was a light bulb. Incredibly it lit up the room despite the fact that there were no wires attached to it.

“Let’s work on this. This is the future,” she said at the time. Now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity, Dr Hall is working to develop wireless “resonance” technology.

“We’re going to transfer power without any kind of wires,” says Dr Hall. “But, we’re not actually putting electricity in the air. What we’re doing is putting a magnetic field in the air.”

WiTricity has developed a “Source Resonator”, which is a coil of electrical wire that can generate a magnetic field when power is attached. When another coil is brought into close proximity, an electrical charge can be generated in it.

“When you bring a device into that magnetic field, it induces a current in the device, and by that you’re able to transfer power,” explains Dr Hall. And that is how the light bulb is able to light up.

These magnetic fields are just the same kind that are used in WiFi routers and therefore are perfectly safe. In the future we could see our houses completely free of wires.

Goodbye To Wires and Plugs

WiTricity plans that one day smartphones will charge whilst in your pocket or bag as you walk around, you will watch your favourite program on a TV that has no wires and that electric cars will refuel without the need to be plugged in.

Hall imagines the endless possibilites of life without the constraints of wires.

“We just don’t think about it anymore: I’m going to drive my car home and I’m never going to have to go to the gas station and I’m never going to have to plug it in.

“I can’t even imagine how things will change when we live like that.”

“The idea of eliminating cables would allow us to re-design things in ways that we haven’t yet thought of, that’s just going to make our devices and everything that we interact with, that much more efficient, more practical and maybe even give brand new functionality.”

It didn't take long, but all the tools you need to transform your Galaxy S4 into an S5 are already available. In this tutorial we'll show you how to get the Quick Settings, notifications shade, settings menu (in both round icon and list view), wallpapers, icons and the new Galaxy S5 apps. You'll even get access to the impressive new Download Booster option.

Things you need

You'll need a rooted S4 running on Android 4.4.2 and a few file downloads we'll move onto in a minute. You'll also need a root explorer like ES File Explorer or Total Commander.

ES File Explorer File ManagerINSTALL

Total Commander - file managerINSTAL

Notification shade and Quick Settings

All you need to do for this is go into your root explorer of choice, and head into the root folder, hit System and scroll down to build.prop and open that up. You'll see a ton of information about your device. All you need to do is locate the ro.product.name and ro.product.device entries and change them to SM-N900S. Save your changes and reboot. You'll now have the new icons in the notifications shade and your Quick Setting will look like those on the S5.

Galaxy S5 apps

These were recently leaked on XDA Developers forum so all you need to do is head over there and grab the APKs for the apps you want. Of course, you're rooted so just delete the previous bloatware versions that you want to replace and grab the new ones you want and install as you would any other APK. Of course, you need to have ''Unknown Sources'' enabled in your security settings first.

S5 wallpapers and icons

The Galaxy S5 wallpapers you can grab with a quick and easy app install from the Play Store. I checked early last week and the offerings were pretty slim (and inaccurate) but they've improved a lot in a short time. There's also a decent-looking Solo theme that'll also get you the Galaxy S5 flat icons.

Galaxy S5 WallpapersINSTALL

Galaxy S5 ThemeINSTALL

Settings menu with list view

All you need to do to get your Settings menu looking like those on the Galaxy S5 is to grab an APK and replace an existing root file with the new one. So head on over to this XDA Developers thread and grab the APK, then open your root explorer and copy that APK into the System/priv-app folder. Once you've done this you need to rename the APK to something easy like SecSettings2.apk and change its permissions to look like those in the screenshot. Once you've done this you can simply remove (but don't delete) the original SecSettings.apk and SecSettings.odex (if you're odexed) and then reboot.

You'll now have two settings icons in your app drawer. One will take you to your old Settings menu and the other to the Galaxy S5-style menu. Some settings will crash, like the fingerprint scanner module for obvious reasons, but you'll have access to Download Booster and other cool features. If you don't like the big round icons just tap the menu button (left button next to Home button) and switch to List View. Now, if you don't see List view you can jump to another XDA thread where you'll find a separate APK for the Note 3 that resolves the missing List View on the S4 as well. Just repeat the same process above with the new APK and you'll be golden. The new Settings menu is a little unstable and some users are reporting some force closes or crashes but it's still pretty cool.

Source: XDA Developers,

The newly released version of Adobe FlashPlayer offers an attractive user experience coupled with stacks of features. Users may now enjoy an improved digital experience available across numerous platforms and browsers for viewing Internet applications consisting of rich and vibrant content.  The new version offers runtime on Mac OS and Windows desktops. Google’s Chrome browser previously has a built-in Adobe Flash Player and, as always, will automatically update when newer versions of Flash Player become available.

As this release is only a beta version, it is prudent not to download the application for critical work, as the technology has not yet been finalised. So, before you install this version, it is most important that you uninstall previous versions of Adobe Flash Player.

The Adobe FlashPlayer 13 version offers high quality content for the computer user. It is a key element in today’s Internet use and, as previously mentioned, it is able to function on all operating systems and browsers as well as on portable devices, like smartphones and tablets. Though there is no apparent interface, users are able to access small windows, where they can create a set of expandable options, such as hardware acceleration and the ability to set privacy preferences, so that they can get improved experience.

The new version (Adobe Flash Player 13) offers the user a better streaming experience for HD content that is of the highest quality. It will now be able to play HD videos smoothly in your browser’s window, with no issues.

Current devices and computers will effortlessly be able to exceed the hardware requirements that are required of Adobe Flash Player 13. However, some older workstations may experience some difficulty while accessing sites that are exclusively constructed using Flash. However, on nearly all modern devices, the runtime application is capable of bringing the highest quality content to your computer, without any interaction at all.  This software is a ‘must have’ client runtime that everybody should have on his or her computer. This new version offers the user an extended enhancement by delivering expressive content to the desktop as well as smartphones, tablets, notebooks and netbooks.

Adobe Flash Player 13 offers support for mobile capabilities, such as support for multi touch and gestures as well as mobile input. HD video content is delivered with very small disbursement on mobile devices as well as on PCs. Developers may take advantage of the newest version to discover new ways of delivering rich media content.

The minimum system requirements for the new version are; 2.33 GHz x 86 compatible processor. (Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor for a netbook). RAM 512 MB, (1 GB is recommended for netbooks). The graphics memory required is 128 MB.

Many people are focussing on the smartphone and tablet manufactures at MWC 2014. Other firms are there to present their technology, which actually powers those latest, must have gadgets. One such company, that is always a smart move to keep an eye on, is Intel–and they rarely disappoint people. This year they have come, packing some new and innovative processors.  Intel announced two new Atom processors: the Merrifield and the Moorefield.

The 64-bit Atom Z3480, codename ‘Merrifield’, is a dual-core chip running at 2.13GHz. Using Intel’s 22nm Silvermont architecture, the processor includes an Intel XMM 7160 LTE chip and a PowerVR Series 6 graphics core. Z3480 equipped devices should start shipping during the second quarter, Intel has said.

Also, along with the new chips, Intel announced a partnership with McAfee to help provide protection against the ever present and insidious malware attacks on Android based devices.  The Intel Device Protection Technology (Intel DPT) will give business enterprise users the facility of separating personal and corporate data on Intel-based Android OS devices.

So all in all, a good exhibit from Intel at the event.  Let’s hope the processors perform as expected.

please leave your comments in the section below.

Google Play Store update 4.6.16 brings new options

A new version of Google Play is currently updating to version 4.6.16. The update isn’t major but it does include a few nice tweaks.

There isn’t an official changelog yet, but so far this is what we have noticed:

• Settings and Help menus have moved into the side navigation menu.
• There is a new option in Settings that you can set to require passwords for all purchases.
• The “Auto-add widgets” option has been changed to “Add icon to Home screen.”
• You can force check for updates of Google Play by going into Settings and tapping on the build version.
• Batch multi-select installs from the “All” page in My Apps.
• If you remove an app from the “All” list, it no longer jumps to the top.

The update will take a few days for everyone to receive but if you’re willing to sideload the APK then you can download it here.

It’s nice to see Google adding more of these features that really should have been rolled out a while ago, nonetheless we welcome these changes.

Source: android central

Elizabeth Holmes was a student at Stanford University, who had a vision to re-invent how taking and testing blood is carried out. She founded a company named Theranos and now, a decade later, has achieved her aim of making phlebotomy more efficient and cost effective.

Theranos has developed a way to radically change how blood is drawn and then tested. Instead of one vial of blood being taken for every necessary test, Holmes’ solution needs only a pinprick  and a drop of blood. From this tiny amount, hundreds of tests can be done; everything from cholesterol tests to complex genetic examinations.

The idea stems from Holmes’ fear of needles and a desire to improve the health care system. She explains how often, diagnosis can come too late and something more could have been done if only tests were done sooner and more efficiently.

Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos after dropping out of Stanford University

This new method has resulted in tests that are faster, more accurate and significantly cheaper than traditional methods. This has big implications for the medical field, including the possibility of winning the fight against major medical problems such as cancer and heart disease.

In order to keep test results accurate Theranos uses only automated devices to process the blood so no human is involved. Holmes explains that 93 percent of error comes from pre-analytic processing, in other words where humans physically handle things.

Theranos introduced its new blood-testing methods in a Walgreens pharmacy in Palo Alto, California last year but the plan is to now roll out the service to other centres. The company outlines its pricing on its website and plan to charge less than 50 percent of the usual Medicare and Mediaid reimbursement costs.

Astronomers Discovers ‘Deadly Star’

Astronomers have claimed that vast O-type stars are littered across the galaxy destroying young planets before they have had time to form.  A research team from US and Canadian are using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to discover that massive quantities of ultraviolet radiation from stars 16-times the mass of our own Sun can destroy the raw materials for fresh planetary systems.

The researchers were tracking stars and protostars in the Orion Nebula when they found that any protostars within 0.1 light years (approx 600bn miles) of an O-type star would have their raw material wiped out by the radiation before it even had a chance to cluster together.  Astronomer Rita Mann explained the situation, “Using ALMA, we looked at dozens of embryonic stars with planet-forming potential and, for the first time, found clear indications where protoplanetary disks simply vanished under the intense glow of a neighbouring massive star”

Scientist estimate that it takes millions of years for gases and stellar dust to begin to combine into something denser and over further time, form into planets. The raw materials in these pre-clusters are believed to come from the explosions of massive stars going supernova.  James Di Francesco, National Research Council of Canada said, “Massive stars are hot and hundreds of times more luminous than our Sun. Their energetic photons can quickly deplete a nearby protoplanetary disk by heating up its gas, breaking it up, and sweeping it away.”

Telescopes such as Hubble have previously allowed astronomers to view very young protostars, (known as proplyds) in Orion; they have lacked the skill to recognize how much mass each one had. But using ALMA meant researcher teams could look inside these forms, to reveal what dust was contained within them.  The team says that with future investigations they will hopefully indicate how ‘common’ solar systems such as our own are.  Who knows? Maybe there are a couple of ‘Sith’ trying to control star systems?

Android To Tizen App Converter

The first Tizen phones may still be on the horizon, but at least one
software provider is already planning ahead. Infraware Technology
debuted software that can port Android apps to the Tizen mobile OS
without additional development or customization. Both Android and Tizen
are based on Linux, of course, but that doesn't mean their native apps
are compatible.

For developers, the result is a way to save the time and costs that would be associated with developing Tizen apps natively, Infraware said. Targeting such developers, Infraware offers to publish the resulting apps in the Tizen app store.

PAG has already successfully ported games including the Angry Bird series, Counter Terrorist,Fruit Slice and Drag Racing, said Infraware, which claims that the software can port between 80 percent and 90 percent of Android apps without the need for recompiling.

The software supports Android-to-Windows app conversion as well.



From app developers to device makers for wearables, we saw real interest in Tizen, both as a platform to develop for and as a springboard to develop new things,

Brian Warner, senior member services manager for Linux Foundation Collaboration Projects,



In the mobile space, "we've seen a lot of interest in tools that easily allow cross-platform development," he added. "In some cases, this means middleware SDKs that deploy apps directly for Tizen, among others, and in others it's tools that streamline porting of already-developed apps like the Polaris App Generator.


"All of these tools are welcome additions to the Tizen ecosystem, because when it comes to populating an app store, one size certainly doesn't fit all," Warner said.





The idea of having a solution to help port apps from one platform to another isn't new, but this particular offering is notable for the fact that there aren't yet any Tizen phones available, Tuong Huy Nguyen, principal research analyst for Gartner, told LinuxInsider.





Then, too, there's the fact that "porting is not as clean as some solution providers may lead you to believe," he noted. "It's not a perfect experience, especially as compared with building the app for the platform itself."



Of course, whether that native-development effort would be justified will depend first and foremost on Tizen's potential.

It may not be an apples-to-apples comparison, but Firefox OS is another newcomer to the mobile space, and it offers "a more Web-based platform with possibly more opportunity," Nguyen said.

Tizen has announced a few hardware vendors, but "it's more indicative of interest than a commitment to launch phones immediately," he concluded.

The Challenge

"We've danced this dance before," agreed IDC Research Director Ramon Llamas. "BlackBerry did it, Nokia is doing it now with the Nokia X.

"If Infraware is going to do it, I have to question how robust is that experience going to be?" he added. "Of the roughly millions of apps available on Android, how many will work seamlessly on Tizen? Will it have a success rate of 100 percent? 90 percent? If not all -- or a vast majority -- there's a challenge there."

In the long term, "I have to take a wait-and-see approach," Llamas concluded. "I think this is a great idea conceptually, tapping into the huge Android app portfolio. The question is, how well are you able to do that?

And you thought all that talk about the “One Ring” was just fantasy straight out of those Lord Of The Rings movies. Well, it turns out there is a ring(s) out there that can control almost everything in your home. As of this writing, though, it doesn’t appear it will allow you to become invisible upon sliding it on your finger. But it will let you do almost everything else with just a swipe of your ring finger.

Of all of the devices on Kickstarter, the Ring seems to stand out the most right now. And, with such a simple and straightforward title, it needs to stand out. While it may not let you bend the will of your friends and families to your own, it promises to let you control most all of the smart devices in your life.

The Ring To Rule Them All

It’s almost impossible to believe, but the makers of the Ring claim that you can pay bills, send text messages, control home appliances, play music, etc., all by making a certain gesture with your ring finger. Once you link the Ring to a smart device (read: smart TV, smartphone, smartwatch, etc.) you can control it. For example, if you want music to start playing, you would point the ring, draw a treble clef into the air, and your music would soon fill the air. Or, if you want to send a text message, you would literally spell it out into the air and the connected device would recognize the letters. You can even use the Ring to dim the lamp in the corner of the living room. Last, but certainly not least, the Ring offers certain vibrations to alert you when you have a notification from Facebook, etc.

What can’t the Ring do?  it won’t help you conquer Middle Earth; you could use it to turn on menacing songs from the LOTR soundtrack, though.

The Ring has already met and exceeded its original Kickstarter goal of $250,000 and it still has 23 days to go in its crowd-funding campaign. If you make an early pledge now of $165 you can get your hands on one of the Rings before they ship out to the public.

SOURCE: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1761670738/ring-shortcut-everything?ref=discovery

Shrinking Gel That Repairs Teeth

Following an examination of embryonic development, scientists have made an advancement in tissue engineering. Scientists from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have been able to develop a new gel-based material, which they say can allow stem cells to repair damaged caused to bones and teeth. What is truly noteworthy is that the gel is able to shrink and effectively copies the physical conditions that occur when  tissue forms naturally.

In developing this gel the scientists took in to account the process known as mesenchymal condensation, which is a critical transitional stage that precedes cartilage formation during embryonic development. Mesenchymal cells, which are a type of stem cell, develop in to mature cells such as bone and enamel.

At SEAS the scientists simulated the compression that mesenchymal cells normally experience during the mesenchymal condensation process. They used a modified form of PNIPAAm polymer as the base of the gel so that it contracted at body temperature. The loose form of the gel was filled with mesenchymal cells and then as the gel was warmed, they were compressed, resulting in a differentiation of cell types and new tissue was formed.

Getting human cells to form in to 3D structures in a lab environment has been a real problem for tissue engineers but this bio-inspired gel could be a big step in helping them understand and overcome the problems.

“Tissue engineers have long raised the idea of using synthetic materials to mimic the inductive power of the embryo,” said senior author Don Ingber, founding director of the Wyss Institute, Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School, and Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS. “We’re excited about this work because it shows that it really is possible.”

The next step for the scientists is to test the gel with layers of mesenchymal cells and epithlial cells to see if they can form a full tooth. If successful, this coulld lead to the development of other tissue types.

There are a lot of people out there who don’t want to get the flu shot. I get it. While some people don’t believe in the vaccine because they don’t believe in vaccinations, there are some out there who most likely would get the shot if it didn’t come attached with a big fear – I’m talking about the needle, of course. I don’t need to convince you, but there are many people out there who would rather be infected with the flu than injected with the flu vaccine. There is, of course, the nasal mist version of the vaccine, but not everyone is able to take that one due to different allergies, etc.

Since the flu is still a big health concern in the world today, most doctors want to do everything they can to encourage people to get the flu vaccine, and they understand that many people are simply afraid of needles. So researchers are doing everything they can to make it easier and more comfortable than ever to get a flu vaccine. What are they wanting to do? They’re wanting to give you a tiny vaccine patch you can take home and apply to your arm in the comfort of your own home. And the best part of all? It’s supposedly painless.

Give Yourself A Flu Vaccine

As you can clearly see in the image , these “microneedle patches” are just that – micro. In fact, they only measure about 7/10th of a millimeter, and researchers have been hard at work creating them to be able to dissolve into the skin. Theoretically, all a person would have to do is apply the patch to their arm, and it would dissolve fairly quickly into their skin, allowing the vaccine to quickly reach the blood stream and travel everywhere it needs to go.

Apparently, the CDC is becoming fond of this idea, and we could most likely see these vaccine patches becoming a reality within the next 5 years.

I don’t know about you, but I think it sure beats a trip to the doctor’s office or the pharmacy. What do you think?

Nokia explain the Windows Phone App Situation

Nokia Canada have published a pretty interesting video explaining the app situation across the platforms from Android, iOS and Windows Phone detailing that bigger numbers aren’t always better, like thousands of flashlight apps in the stores.

The video explains that although Windows Phone might not have the most applications, the big ones are on board, as well as some exclusive only on the Microsoft platform, check out the video below.

Does the App situation still plague Windows Phone? I’d like to think not but speaking with people on a daily basis they still think that Windows Phone has a lack of truly good apps, hopefully these sort of videos will help educate more people around the progress of Windows Phone and its selection of applications.

Source: Nokia Canada on YouTube

Will Titanfall' fire up Xbox One sales?

Microsoft Corp is betting on making sci-fi combat game "Titanfall" a hit big enough to boost sales of its Xbox One videogame device, helping it catch up in terms of sales with rival Sony Corp's PlayStation 4 console.

the $60 game allows players to go toe-to-toe as soldiers, or take control of giant robots in a war-torn urban setting.

"We're making a big bet that 'Titanfall' is going to be a blockbuster launch for Xbox," Yusuf Mehdi, head of marketing and strategy for Microsoft's Xbox group, said in an email interview.

As part of its "Titanfall" campaign, Microsoft will also promote the game at South by Southwest, the annual gathering of tech industry experts, filmmakers and musicians  in Austin, Texas. Developed by Respawn Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts, the game will be made available for the older Xbox 360 consoles on March 25.

Microsoft is locked in a console battle with Japan's Sony, which announced last week it had sold 6 million PlayStation 4 units as of March 2. The device beat the Xbox One to become the top-selling console in the United States in January, according market research firm NPD Group.

Both the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launched in November last year. Microsoft has not provided an update on sales since January, when it said Xbox One sales crossed three million units as of the end of 2013.

Priced $100 more than the $399 PlayStation 4, the Xbox One is seemingly trailing behind in sales. In February, Microsoft announced an Xbox One and "Titanfall" bundle for $499, effectively offering the game for free.

With the launch of "Titanfall" much anticipated, the games industry is watching to see if the title can replicate the "Halo" effect. Released exclusively for the Xbox back in 2001, "Halo" - another sci-fi shooter game - became a blockbuster franchise, fuelling sales of Xbox consoles.

"We don't have a sales forecast for the game to share, but we expect it to be big for us," Mehdi said.