NVIDIA has proven repeatedly that it wants to be the driving force in Android gaming, and between the SHIELD Tablet and the SHIELD Android TV, it definitely has the hardware to back it up. The other piece of the puzzle is, of course, the games, and NVIDIA is constantly working to both secure exclusives and curate excellent games for both its own GeForce Now service as well as Android. Today, NVIDIA has organized a winter sale that includes a number of excellent titles in both stores.

These GeForce Now titles are 75% off:

• LEGO Marvel Super Heroes
• LEGO The Hobbit
• LEGO The Lord of the Rings

These Android titles are all 50% off:

• Hotline Miami
• Hotline Miami 2
• Titan Souls
• OlliOlli
• Luftrausers

It’s not specifically part of this sale, but in case you missed it, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance for NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV is still 50% off as part of its introductory sale, but like the rest of these offers, that deal will come to an end this Sunday, January 31st.

The GeForce Now titles are exclusive to SHIELD devices and, with the exception of OlliOlli, that is true for the Android titles as well. If you own any of the SHIELD devices, this is a great chance to load up your games library on the cheap!

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Welcome back to Android Gaming Weekly, our weekly recap of new game releases. We still plan to cover upcoming releases and games we’re playing, but this column is dedicated to new games that you can start playing right now. Check out our top picks and let us know in the comments section if you have any suggestions for next week’s post.

Flick Quarterback

Description: BE THE QUARTERBACK. Call the shots, pass to receivers, dodge blitzing defenders, score touchdowns and throw amazing trick shots. You are the MVP.

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Cartoon Wars 3

Description:  Come see why over 80 million users worldwide have played this legendary series! Prepare yourself to be drawn into the action. Strategically assemble your army and destroy the opposing tower. Use your Arrow Launcher to defend your castle from incoming enemy units.

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Super Awesome RPG

Description: Super Awesome RPG is an anime-themed CCG-style combat system designed especially for playing on the go. It offers a twist on the RPG genre with a CCG-style gameplay wherein actions come from what equipment your heroes wear, and executing attacks is done through a tactical scratch-card like mechanic.

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World Chef

Description: Welcome to a game so mouth-watering you should probably play with a bib on. This is World Chef, a place where the kitchen never closes and the waiters always have big smiles on their faces.

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Blade: Sword of Elysion

Description: Blade: Sword of Elysion is an infinite epic action RPG. Slash through dungeons and annihilate all evil forces. Evade and raid other heroes in a bloodstained, action-packed arena. Engage in fierce PvP battles and show no mercy!

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Tigerball

Description: Bounce your way to glory in this endless arcade! Featuring : Super realistic physics, Silky smooth swipe control, Fast paced or relaxing depending on how you play, and 100 handcrafted levels set in 20 worlds.

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Punch Club

Description: Punch Club is a boxing tycoon management game with multiple branching story lines. Your goal is clear, but how you get there depends on whether you want to legitimately climb the rankings, or take the more ridiculous, shady route.

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Crashlands

Description:  Craft, battle, and quest your way through Crashlands, an outlandish, story-driven Crafting RPG overflowing with sass! Learn recipes from the local sentient life, make new friends, uncover ancient secrets and deadly bosses, tame everything and build yourself a home-away-from-home as you learn to thrive on planet Woanope.

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Panzer Waltz

Description: Set in a world at war with experimentation gone awry, humanity must fight against what they had created! Discover the story behind the madness as you set off to defend your fellow compatriots. Their future is in your hands!

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Downwell

Description: Downwell is a curious game about a young boy venturing down a well in search of untold treasures with only his Gunboots to protect him. Make your way further and further down into the darkness filled with nasty creatures and mysterious secrets to collect the spectacular red gems scattered about the rocks.

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Social networks are constantly changing and evolving to keep up with the the demands of today’s fast-moving society. One social media trend that’s taken off over the past year is live video streaming. Meerkat and Periscope spent a few months duking it out to see who could expand more quickly, with Periscope ultimately taking the top spot in live video streaming.

But Periscope isn’t getting exclusivity on the live video streaming market. Facebook is entering into the live video streaming market with its aptly-titled Live Video. The company began testing the feature in December and today announced that it was rolling the feature out to all iPhone users within the US. Global expansion will follow in the coming weeks.

Android users will have to wait a bit longer, as Facebook has said no more than that Live Video for Android is coming “soon”. With that vague of a timeframe, it’s safe to assume that the wait will be closer to weeks and months rather than days.

Utilizing Live Video is simple. You can simply tap on “Update Status” and then tap on the Live Video icon. Before streaming begins, you can write a quick description of what you’ll be streaming as well as choosing the audience that you want to share with. Once you end the live stream, the video will be saved to your timeline and can be watched and replayed by you and your friends.

Here’s a question for you: how many of you actually use live video streaming? Will you be trying Facebook’s Live Video?

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Tomorrow will mark the two-year anniversary of Lenovo’s announcement that it would purchase Motorola Mobility. Since the two companies became one, Motorola has continued to function much the same as before. But change may be in the works. Just weeks ago, Lenovo announced that the Motorola brand would be phased out. Future devices created by the Motorola branch of Lenovo will be sold under the Lenovo name and the Moto brand which has been popularized with phones such as the Moto X and Moto G.

The first of those new Moto phones may not be too far in the future. In a recent interview, Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang said that the company would be launching a “more innovative, [and] more attractive” Moto device in July. This device will launch in the US and will be an attempt to strengthen the foothold that Motorola has in the country.

Lenovo’s own mobile brand doesn’t yet have a presence in the US, so at present, the company is leveraging the Moto brand as a means to pave the way for the launch of Lenovo’s personal brand within the US. Within developing countries, however, Lenovo has plans to snatch up some of the newly available market share. In particular, Yang mentioned the markets of India, Africa and the Middle East.

As a whole, Lenovo sees the mobile market as a means to help guide customers towards Lenovo’s PCs. Even with global PC sales declining, Lenovo is of the opinion that consumers will soon begin to shift back to more capable PCs. If the company can secure customers in the mobile market, it has a much higher likelihood of persuading those customers to purchase Lenovo PCs over competitor brands.

Whether or not Lenovo’s prediction will come to pass remains to be seen, but we look forward to seeing what the company brings to the table in the mobile market.

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HTC has had a rough time over the past couple of years. The company has struggled financially for quite some time, but it looked to be on the road to recovery after launching the oft-praised HTC One M7. The company followed that success up with the One M8, another hit. But last year’s HTC One M9 was a miss for the company, failing to move forward in any substantial way.

This year, HTC looks to be coming out swinging with the upcoming HTC One M10. The device will reportedly be one of HTC’s most advanced devices to date, and a new specs leak from VentureBeat appears to confirm that.

HTC is reportedly packing the One M10 with a 5.1-inch QHD (2560×1440) AMOLED display, making it the first HTC global flagship to feature a QHD display. In terms of horsepower, the One M10 will reportedly utilize Qualcomm’s powerful new Snapdragon 820 process paired with an Adreno 530 GPU and 4GB of RAM. In terms of storage, the prototype device in question had 23GB of usable storage, indicating a storage capacity of at least 32GB.

The One M10 also reportedly features a fingerprint scanner built into a physical home button. Unfortunately, we still can’t be too sure about the design, as the leaker declined to comment on the design, aside from mentioning that the device no longer features front-facing BoomSound speakers, which will be a disappointment to many HTC fans. The leaker also mentioned that the design may be subject to change, so take potential design leaks with a grain of salt.

While HTC has swung back and forth with its camera technology, the company looks to be returning to its homegrown UltraPixel technology for the One M10. UltraPixels, of course, are intended to improve low-light performance, though their effectiveness has been somewhat debated. The device will reportedly feature a 12-UltraPixel rear camera with laser autofocus. Additionally, both the front and rear cameras on the One M10 will utilize optical image stabilization, helping to avoid shaking in video and low-light.

As it currently stands, HTC looks to have a very strong device on its hands. We can’t predict the future, but from how it sounds, it seems that HTC could have a winner, potentially turning the company around if it’s marketed correctly.

HTC reportedly won’t be announcing the One M10 at Mobile World Congress. Instead, the company is planning to wait and announce the device at its own event later in the spring. Until then, we’ll continue to keep you up to date on the latest HTC One M10 rumors.

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T-Mobile is known for making controversial moves, but one that’s been garnering quite a bit of attention is Binge On. Binge On is T-Mobile’s program that allows customers to stream video from select sources without chewing into data allotments.

Today, T-Mobile announced that it’s adding four new service to Binge On. These video services include Amazon Video, Fox News, Univision NOW and WWE Network. Streaming video from these services will no longer impact data allotments.

Binge One has ruffled some feathers, however. One issue is that T-Mobile works to prevent network clogs by lowering the streaming quality of video services, even if they aren’t a part of Binge One. For example, Google found that T-Mobile was lowering the quality of YouTube streaming, even though YouTube isn’t a part of Binge On. To help avoid the negative impact, T-Mobile has introduced simple short codes to allow users to toggle whether Binge On is active or not. As such, users can enter a short code into their dialer to toggle the service on and off.

Here’s a list of the new short codes to change settings:

• #BNG# (#264#) and hit send to check your Binge On settings
• #BOF# (#263#) to toggle Binge On off
• #BON# (#266#) to toggle Binge On on

The larger issue at hand is the threat that Binge On poses to net neutrality. T-Mobile has raised eyebrows on net neutrality before with services like Music Freedom, but Binge On continues the company’s trend. The company has drawn flack for its controversial moves against net neutrality, but as of right now, it doesn’t appear as though it’s planning to make any changes to its game plan.

Check out the source link below for more information on Binge On.

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OnePlus is finally getting better at this whole making products available for customers to purchase when they want thing. It took them about 4 months after the release of the OnePlus 2 before it was available for general purchase, and now the OnePlus X joins it only about 3 months after its launch.

This comes less than a week after OnePlus pulled the lowest cost option OnePlus 2 in the US and Europe, which has created considerably more separation between the two options with the OnePlus X starting at $249/£199 versus $389/£289 for the lone OnePlus 2 configuration.

It’s worth noting that the OnePlus X isn’t terribly well suited to US customers given the lack of Bands 12 and 17, making it mostly a 3G-only affair for AT&T and T-Mobile customers.

You can also enjoy 20% off a number of cases for your OnePlus X, and you’ll want to take advantage of that offer with your smartphone purchase since orders over $100 from OnePlus now ship free.

Do we have any OnePlus X owners out there or any of you looking to pick it up now that you don’t need to plot out your purchase on your calendar?

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New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Mimicker Alarm

Description: Mimicker Alarm, a Microsoft Garage Project, is a free morning alarm clock app that helps you wake up from sleep and stay up by playing a simple game, called a “Mimic”.

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Gigbloc

Description: Explore, discover and experience up-and-coming artists playing in local venues in your city over the coming week. Our ambition is to transform the way people connect with their city; to improve the accessibility of the local music scene.

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Kickstarter

Description:  Kickstarter is home to a community of people working to bring creative projects to life. Together, they’ve pledged over $2 billion to support everything from art, to games, innovative technologies, Oscar-winning documentaries, and much, much more.

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Wallz 100k+ Amazing Wallpapers

Description: Wallz is a great wallpaper app, with thousands (over 100,000 wallpapers) of high definition wallpapers to be downloaded for your android phone.

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Goosebumps VR

Description: Use your mobile device to help R.L. Stine escape the Praying Mantis! With both Virtual Reality and 360 Video modes you’ll be left screaming with terror as the giant bug chases you through the streets!

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Notepad

Description: Adler Notes is free, full-featured and easy to use notepad app for Android. You can use it as a digital notebook or diary. Our app is also perfect for recording lectures, business meetings and interviews.

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Chrooma Keyboard

Description: A lightweight, fast keyboard that adapts itself to the app you are using, giving you a pleasant chromatic feeling. Swipe typing. Resizable Keyboard. Supports STANDARD (English, Italian, Spanish, etc… ) and INDIC languages (more than 60 languages).

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Movesum

Description: Movesum is a brand new step-counting concept that helps you find the motivation to exercise. The beautifully designed app provides you with a simple and effective way to set movement goals, stay committed, and connect your activity with the way you eat.

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Metamorphabet

Description: Metamorphabet is a playful, interactive alphabet for all ages. Poke, prod, drag, and spin each of the 26 letters of the alphabet to reveal surprising and luminous transformations.

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Roomi

Description: Need a roommate? Roomi makes it easy to find and connect with compatible roommates in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego (and more cities coming soon!).

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Downwell was a surprise indie hit late last year on iOS and PC, appearing on multiple game of the year lists and frequently called out by reviewers as wildly addictive.

At first glance, the game is not much to look at. It uses simple 8-bit graphics and an extremely limited color palette, so if the retro aesthetic isn’t your thing, this probably won’t be the game for you.

The goal of the game, as the title suggests, is to get down while avoiding traps and jumping on or blasting enemies with your gun boots until you reach the final boss. You can move yourself side to side while falling and jump when you find yourself on solid ground or atop an enemy. Jumping on enemies recharges your boots and starts you on a combo that is stopped as soon as you touch down on actual ground.

You will find a variety of power-ups along the way, including additional health (you start with 4 health) and modifications to your weapon like the Laser and Shotgun that have advantages and disadvantages.

Despite the simplistic art style and gameplay, Downwell can be shockingly difficult, particularly as you unlock new play styles. This is the kind of game you could find yourself playing for months on end trying to truly master it.

If you want to get an idea of what you are in for, here’s a 20-minute video of someone clearing Hard mode.

If any of this has piqued your interest, you can pick up Downwell in Google Play right now for $3.00.

Let us know how you fare with it.

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Google has made a few moves, including appointing of a head of virtual reality, over the last month that point to a greater commitment to VR in the future, and today Google’s blog is highlighting how far it has come with VR already.

Google Cardboard is unquestionably the most widely used VR platform in history, with over 5 million having shipped since the launch 19 months ago. It may not be remotely the equal of the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, or even Samsung’s Gear VR, but it is still capable of delivering amazing experiences at a fraction of the cost of anything else on the market.

There are now over 1,000 Google Cardboard compatible apps in Google Play and over 25 million Cardboard apps have been installed from Google Play, with 10 million of those coming in the period from October to December. The top 5 apps for Cardboard are Chair in A Room, Vrse, Lamper VR: Firefly Rescue, Caaaaardboard! and Proton Pulse.

Over 350,000 hours of YouTube content have been watched in VR and since the launch of Cardboard Camera in December, and over 750,000 VR photos have been captured with it.

Highlighting the educational opportunity offered by Cardboard, over half a million students have now used it to take a virtual field trip with Google Expeditions.

These are impressive statistics for something that many people assumed was a joke when it first launched. In an exclusive interview with Time today, Clay Bavor, the aforementioned new VR head for Google, had a few comments on the future of VR at Google. When asked about new higher-end Cardboard “hardware,” he made it clear that Google’s primary focus was on making sure that everyone could have access to VR, but that Cardboard in its current form is “not the end of the line.” “I think if you imagine the types of things that a company with the ambition and the technical resources and the know-how of Google would be working on, we’re working on a lot of those things,” he said.

While Google may not be pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with VR right now, it is positioning itself as the company that delivers VR to the masses, and that is potentially an incredibly valuable place to be at the dawn of mainstream VR.

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