From CNET News.com: The online giant has made another acquisition only days after reaching a deal to buy Tumblr. This time around, Yahoo is expanding in the gaming arena with the purchase of PlayerScale.

PlayerScale develops software for cross-plaform gaming that allows publishers and aggregators to quickly scale titles across various platforms. Founded in 2011, the company has over 150 million users worldwide, and it's adding more than 400,000 new users every day.

PlayerScale CEO Jesper Jensen announced the merger Thursday on the company's Web site, saying PlayerScale won't be going anywhere and its gaming infrastructure platform will continue to support its existing products.

"Our goal has always been to help developers build the best possible games, without having to worry about building and scaling the infrastructure required to operate today's biggest successes," he said. "In working with the folks at Yahoo, it has become clear that we share this passion."

Jensen noted that in the past four months alone, PlayerScale has increased its daily user growth rate by almost 60 percent. With Yahoo's backing, it can release new products and improvements much faster, he said.

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From DailyTech: Lenovo has released its earnings reports for its fiscal Q4 and full year, which ended on March 31. Lenovo posted record sales of $34 billion, which was an increase of 15% compared to the previous year. Lenovo reported year-end pre-tax income of $801 million, which is an increase of 38% year over year.

Earnings for the technology company reached a record of $635 million, which is an increase of 34% from the previous year. Lenovo also reports a 15.5% share of the overall market for the full year. Lenovo still seeks the number one position in the global computer market and is working hard to get there.

Revenues for Q4 totaled $7.8 billion Lenovo and gross profit for the quarter $963 million. That last number is an impressive 20% growth year-over-year. Basic earnings per share as reported by Lenovo were $1.22 per share leading Lenovo's board to declare a dividend of $1.81 per share.

“Despite a challenging macro-economic environment and ongoing PC industry transformation, Lenovo delivered a strong performance in the 2012/13 fiscal year. Not only were we the fastest growing among all major PC players, with record market share, revenue and profitability, more importantly, our smartphone and tablet businesses saw dramatic growth,” said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO.

Lenovo is proving that it can weather the PC market downturn while competitors like Dell and HP are still struggling. Lenovo is even reportedly looking to double dip into IBM by purchasing its server business (Lenovo already bought IBM’s consumer PC business back in 2005).

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From DailyTech: Intel's new CEO has only been at the helm for a week, but he's determined to turn things around with a company shake-up.

Brian Krzanich, who became Intel's CEO on May 16 after 30 years with the company, sent an internal memo to employees Monday regarding Intel's new focus and changes made within the company.

The memo said that Intel's major product groups (the PC client group, mobile communications and data center) will now report directly to Krzanich instead of Intel Architecture group chief Dadi Perlmutter.

Mike Bell will supervise Intel's "new devices" group," which is a brand-new group that will focus on emerging product trends.

Renee James (who was previously the head of software) will now oversee the company's global manufacturing operations and all aspects of security technology. She will also lead corporate strategy and planning.

Doug Fisher, a senior executive from Intel's software group, will take James' place as software head.

Hermann Eul, who previously ran Intel's mobile communications group with Bell, will now completely take over that position.

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From X-bit Labs: Nvidia Corp. on Monday announced that it is unleashing the full graphics potential of enterprise desktop virtualization with the availability of Nvidia Grid vGPU integrated into Citrix XenDesktop 7. As a result, low-cost desktops will get access to state-of-the-art Nvidia GeForce graphics remotely.

"For the first time, Nvidia Grid vGPU gives users of virtualized desktops the performance, stability and compatibility of hardware-accelerated graphics. Millions of those involved in everything from product design to manufacturing to supply chain management can now enjoy the benefits of desktop and application virtualization with Nvidia Grid vGPU technology," said Jeff Brown, vice president and general manager of the Grid business unit at Nvidia.

Nvidia Grid vGPU technology addresses a challenge that has grown in recent years with the rise of employees using their own notebooks and portable devices for work. These workers have increasingly relied on desktop virtualization technologies for anytime access to computing resources, but until now this was generally used for the more standard enterprise applications. Performance and compatibility constraints had made it difficult for applications such as building information management (BIM), product-lifecycle management (PLM) and video-photo editing.

Two decades ago hardware-based graphics replaced software emulation. Desktop virtualization solutions stood alone as the only modern computing form without dedicated graphics hardware. As a result, an already busy virtualized CPU limited performance and software emulation hampered application compatibility.

The situation began to improve a year ago with the introduction of the non-virtualized GPU in Citrix XenServer. But efficiency gains were limited because each user still required a dedicated GPU.

With the introduction of new HDX GPU sharing and deep compression techniques in XenDesktop 7, Nvidia and Citrix customers can immediately take advantage of the hosted-shared form of desktop virtualization to deliver rich, graphics-intensive applications. Using the Microsoft Windows Server RDSH and XenDesktop 7 platform can enable the sharing of GPUs across multiple user sessions.

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From X-bit Labs: Microsoft Corp. said it believes that Xbox 360 games will not be needed in the next ten years and those, who still love bestsellers like Gears of War or Halo may keep their existing Xbox 360 consoles. At the same time, Microsoft said it would make a big announcement concerning the Xbox 360 at the E3 trade-show.

“People can keep their Xbox 360 [hardware] and obviously the content will continue to work but we really wanted to take a forward-looking position with Xbox One – something designed for the next ten years – and that required backward compatability be one of those things we had to put off the list. Are we worried about it? No,” said Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios at Microsoft, in an interview with Edge Online web-site.

The software giant explained that since the Xbox One is based on system-on-chip that features x86 general-purpose microprocessor cores as well as AMD/ATI Radeon HD graphics adapter powered by GCN architecture, whereas the Xbox 360 relies on IBM Power architecture as well as ATI R500-series graphics, it impossible to run video games designed for X360 on current hardware. However, the Xbox 360 can run the majority of titles developed for the original Xbox, even though the latter was powered by an Intel Celeron processor and Nvidia GeForce graphics engine.

One of the reasons why graphics sub-system of Xbox One cannot maintain backwards compatibility with highly-custom graphics sub-system of Xbox 360 could be the use of higher-speed EDRAM on the latter. The Xbox One is believed to be equipped with 32MB of ESRAM buffer with 102GB/s bandwidth, whereas the Xbox 360 is equipped with buffer chip containing 10MB of EDRAM along with additional logic that exchanges data with the main chip at whopping 256GB/s. Given that many games use all the capabilities X360 has to offer, no surprising that they also utilize this one, which is physically impossible to replicate on Xbox One hardware.

It is interesting to note that Microsoft does not EOL the previous-generation console and claims it will have a big announcement about at the forthcoming E3 trade-show.

“In fact we have a big announcement about Xbox 360 […] at E3 that I am excited about. People will keep their boxes, maybe on a new TV, maybe alongside an Xbox One,” said Mr. Spencer.

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From CNET News.com: Just a day after Sprint upped its bid to acquire Clearwire, the latter's board has said that it's the right deal for the company.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Clearwire's board announced that it has approved the new deal with Sprint. The board has also asked shareholders to vote in favor of the acquisition when they meet to place their ballots on May 31.

Sprint made a surprising announcement on Tuesday, saying that it would up its initial offer to buy the remaining 50 percent of Clearwire that it doesn't own from $2.97 per share to $3.40. The deal is 10 cents higher than the $3.30-per-share unsolicited offer made by Dish.

It's no surprise that Clearwire's board approved the deal: it also thought that the $2.97-per-share offer was one that its shareholders should approve. Dish, though, has yet to respond to the new offer, which could throw a wrench in the plans.

That said, Sprint has no plans to get into a bidding war. Speaking to CNET on Tuesday, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the latest bid is his company's "best and final" offer.

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From DailyTech: Sources indicate that Sony Corporation is currently considering a proposal from one of its top shareholders, Third Point LLC, to spin off its movie and music businesses. Reuters reports that hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb’s hedge fund, which owns 6% of Sony’s stock worth roughly $1.1 billion, called on Sony to spinoff its profitable entertainment arm amid a decline in some other segments.

News of the potential spinoff sent shares of the company up 9% with shares trading at $22.87 yesterday afternoon.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony has announced that it plans to discuss the proposal with its board.

"The proposal from Third Point, Dan Loeb is something that we should discuss thoroughly at a board meeting and then we'll decide Sony's stance," Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said in a briefing Wednesday to lay out his strategic vision for the company. "Therefore, we are now going to start the discussion and we are still at the starting stage."

Hirai didn't offer any timeframe for the discussions.

Loeb believes that taking up to 20% of Sony's Entertainment Division public would help generate capital needed to overhaul Sony's ailing electronics business. Sony performed something very similar in 2007 when its banking and insurance unit made an IPO.

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From DailyTech: Rosewill announced that it is adding three new members to its line of powerline networking adapters.

The three new members are the RPLC-201KIT, RPLC-201PKIT and RPLC-200PKIT AV+ Premium. The line is being expanded thanks to the success of the RPLC-200KIT and RPLC-500KIT adapters.

The RPLC-201KIT is a 200Mbps Powerline AV mini Wall-Plug Adapter with HomePlug AV technology, a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, 128-bit AES encryption, a range of 984 feet over the power line, expandability of up to 8 units and HD video/online gaming compatibility. Its power consumption is <2.5W Operation, 1.21W Idle, 0.48W Standby (30 mins without data transmit detection) and dimensions are 2.72 x 2.28 x 1.22in.

The RPLC-201PKIT has the same features as the RPLC-201KIT, with the exception of power consumption (<2.7W Operation, 1.6W Idle, 0.34W Standby -- 30 mins without data transmit detection) and dimensions (4.61 x 2.36 x 2.09in).

The RPLC-200PKIT AV+ Premium has all the same features as the RPLC-201PKIT, with the exception of a speed of up to 500Mbps.

"The RPLC powerline adapters’ push button setup will secure your extended network and have it up and running within seconds with a simple push of a button on each pair," said Rosewill. "The mini size of the RPLC-201KIT is designed to save room for your limited power outlets and the pass-through feature of the RPLC-201PKIT and RPLC-200PKIT provides a one for one offer where it will take one power outlet and give one back."

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