Twitter’s New 'Buy' Button

Fancy shopping while you tweet? Sarah Dobbs finds out more about Twitter's new 'Buy' function.

Twitter is undergoing some changes at the moment. We've had new profile roll-outs, new feature roll-outs, and all sorts of changes to the terms and conditions. We've even seen a new tweet font replace the old familiar one on profile pages and streams. Now, Twitter's starting to trial another new feature, one that could genuinely change how we perceive and use the service: a 'Buy' button.

Yup, Twitter is hatching plans to get itself into e-commerce. Or, as the email announcement put it, Twitter is launching a feature that will "allow you to buy merchandise from some of the most popular names on Twitter, without leaving the Twitter experience."

Tearaway Unfolded

Atoi & Iota show yet more reckless disregard for rainforests.

On paper, this one’s an open-and-shut case. Media Molecule fills a meeting room full of mind-bogglingly well-crafted origami, talks excitedly in endearing Blue Peter tones about its new project, then releases it and we all love it. We’ve seen it all before. No, literally, we’ve seen it all before: in this case the game generating the excited chatter is Tearaway.

Okay, Tearaway Unfolded. The Guildford Studio’s first foray into PlayStation 4 presents the unique challenge of translating the thoughtful and imaginative PS Vita controls onto DualShock 4. As with those poetic foreign words with no English equivalent (go on, Google ‘Kummerspeck’), there’s no obvious way to translate the ‘popping your fingers through the screen’ mechanic using the Vita’s rear touchpad to a DualShock.

A spark of life

Halo 4 was the first time Master Chief went to war outside Bungie, and a huge bet for Microsoft and its brand-new studio. As 343 puts the finishing touches to the Master Chief Collection, we go back to the studio’s debut to see how it holds up.

When 343 Industries came into being in July 2009 – the date of a filing by Microsoft that named the studio taking responsibility for Halo after the series’ most genocidally conscientious character – it had a long list of things to do. Small things, such as growing from scratch a studio that could operate at the very peak of blockbuster development; reintroducing the most successful, recognisable and important character on Xbox; reinventing the most successful game on Xbox (while simultaneously making it the same, obviously); and doing it all under the shadow of a fixed-in-stone autumn 2012 release date for the game it had been created to deliver: Halo 4.

Game Capture HD60

Show off your smooth gaming moves with this new video capture box.

This is a new version of Elgato’s HDMI capture box, designed to let you plug an HDMI source such as a games console into your Mac and record what it produces. They’re often used by gamers to broadcast themselves playing. This new version is aimed at PS4 and Xbox One owners who want to show off new-gen games at their best – at 1080p and 60 frames per second, rather than 720p60/1080p30 on the original model. Analog input is gone, though, so you can’t record from PS3 (its digital output is copyprotected) or retro consoles.

The HD60 uses the same Mac app as the older model, which gained Twitch, Ustream and YouTube streaming in a previous update. It has an improved layout, with buttons for recording input and live commentary and for streaming across the bottom of its window.