This week's Technology Observatory brings you the following stories:

• Microsoft gets ready to unveil a gesture-controlled smartphone as its flagship terminal this year
• Microsoft at E3 2014: An entire conference dedicated to games for Xbox One
• PlayStation at E3 2014: PS4 takes center stage
• PlayStation TV to reach Europe, the USA and Canada by the end of the year, for 99 dollars
• Telefónica to throw itself into its television services with a model inspired by Netflix
• Vodafone plans September launch for its first suite of joint product offers with ONO cable provider
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S
• Microsoft to stop using the Nokia brand, but when?

We were somewhat surprised by Amazon's possible gamble on a terminal principally based on a series of cameras to allow gesture control, but the market seems to be taking off in that direction. At any rate, Microsoft has now jumped on the bandwagon. According to a report in The Verge, by the end of this year Microsoft may be ready to unveil a new smartphone with an interface that can be controlled without touching the display and interaction through gestures over or near it, thanks to the aid of Kinect-style technology. The device is one of the great developments that Nokia is reported to have been working on in recent years, and the official announcement might well come this year. To get an idea of the importance that Microsoft attaches to this new model, it is expected to replace the Nokia 1020, with the camera still one of the star functions. The gesture control system will either be called 3D Touch or Real Motion, and apparently several developers are already working on applications and services that will use the terminal sensors to control the interface and functions. It seems there will be a large number of sensors, so much so that they will probably be the terminal's key feature. The possibilities range from putting your hand over the display to switch off an alert or take an incoming call to managing the interface tiles simply by placing your finger over them, with more than a nod to the Samsung SPen. But holding the terminal up to your ear or leaving it on a table will also serve as "actuators" for the phone so you'll be able to switch the display on without touching a physical button; the phone will simply detect when you pick it up and hold it in front of you to activate the display. The terminal that will come with all of these novel functionalities is likely to be the Nokia McLaren. They were originally meant to be included for the Windows Phone 8.1 but have obviously been delayed a few months.

Phil Spencer said as much when he took over as head of the Xbox team and he stressed it again at the beginning of the conference: this E3 would revolve entirely around games. And so it was. Ninety minutes of endless game announcements can leave no one in any doubt about the new Microsoft's intentions. It's a long list but here is a brief description of all the novelties announced for the Microsoft Xbox One and other consoles. Even so, the guys in Redmond say this is just the beginning. Microsoft has rearranged its priorities and aims to invest a lot of its effort in new games and in persuading developers to bring the best titles to its platform. It's a pledge backed by Spencer's entire Xbox team. He also expressed his gratitude for the feedback received from users, which has clearly influenced the shift of the current Xbox to pure gaming.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

There can be few better ways to start a conference that with the return of one the most successful franchises of recent times. Call of Duty will captivate a new generation with a new journey to the warfare of the future. The game will come with all kinds of futuristic technology to aid players on the battle field: drones, mechs, invisibility cloaks and new weapons. As if that weren't enough, Kevin Spacey also puts in an appearance. We won't have to wait long to see all of this deployed as the release date has been set for November 4, 2014 and will come with exclusive content for Xbox One.

Assassin's Creed Unity

Another famous saga in the world of video games is Assassin's Creed. Ubisoft is gearing up to conquer a new generation with a fresh splurge of graphics that transports players to the French Revolution. The game also comes with a cooperative multiplayer mode so you can join forces with up to three other people to form your own gang of assassins and set heads rolling.

Forza Horizon 2

Turn 10 clearly decided it couldn't pass up the occasion of this year's edition of E3 to shed more light on its recently announced new open-world version of Forza. Forza Horizon 2 will be launched for Xbox One on September 13, bringing new modes of play and over 200 cars that will gleam more brightly than ever at 1080p. It will be accompanied by more and more content for Forza 5, including the legendary Nürbungring circuit, every single millimeter of which has been recreated and can now be downloaded free of charge in Xbox One.

Evolve

Evolve has been a long time in development but its release is getting closer and closer. The sci-fi game from Turtle Rock Studios will be a cooperative multiplayer experience where you'll be able to choose from four different types of characters and even adopt the monster's personality. The beta version will be out in the fall with an exclusive DLC for Xbox One.

Sunset Overdrive

As was only to be expected, the latest mind-blowing development from Insomniac Games had its own niche at the Microsoft conference with an entertaining trailer and a 2-minute demo. The mutants have turned Sunset City into an open world where fighting for survival in the wackiest ways imaginable promises a crazy, fun-packed experience. Sunset Overdrive will finally reach Xbox One on October 28.

Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX Plus Alpha

But if it's crazy you want, look no further than the add-on to Dead Rising 3 with one of the longest game names in history. The latest development from Capcom returns to Xbox One with a bizarre version of its zombie-killing saga where you'll be able to control some of the classic characters from the company's franchises. Available for download as from today for €9.99.

Fable Legends

The fantasy world of Fable returns with a cooperative game where up to four players can roam the vast countryside. One of the most interesting features is that you can also control the villain of the game with a new perspective, manipulating the world and the challenges the heroes face as if you were an evil god determined to complicate things for the do-gooders. You'll be able to test the fascinating combination offered by Fable Legends with the multiplayer beta version due out this fall.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

The Xbox conference was also the scene chosen for the world premiere of the future Tomb Raider. An introductory trailer offered us a glimpse of the now-retired Lara Croft battling with psychological issues and feeling nostalgic about her past adventures. However, the video was just an appetizer and Rise of the Tomb Raider wont' reach the new-generation consoles until the end of 2015.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

If we're talking about comebacks, another is the Halo saga. 343 Industries wants to explore the past and future of Master Chief and its new edition of the games in the saga is sure to delight fans. As from November 11 all the Halo games, from 1 through 4, will be available on Xbox One with Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The remastered edition will include a multiplayer mode for the saga and a beta version of the new Halo 5 Guardians.

Tom Clancy's The Division

The military simulator from Massive Entertainment is back, now set in a snow-covered New York that has just been devastated by a pandemic. The gameplay demo of The Division revealed some interesting novelties like on-screen information so that you can keep your focus on the action and a continuous stream of orders from your companions. Another team work product with shades of RPG thanks to the addition of points of experience to add even more variety to a title that is already aiming high.

Crackdown

'Crackdown' is back for Xbox. One of the most surprising and refreshing sagas of the last generation returns to Xbox with a new game that comes with a cooperative multiplayer mode: agents with special powers, vehicles, all kinds of weapons and an entire city to explore (and exploit). Crackdown is back and we expect the latest version, due out in 2015, to be as entertaining as ever.

The Whitcher 3: Wild Hunt

One the great hopes from the RPG genre also had its moment at the conference. The creators of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt demonstrated just what their game is capable of with a real-time demo that revealed the mechanics of the combats, with the use of magic and the sword. We also got a chance to see the excellent graphics we can expect.

And more...

The list of games presented by Microsoft doesn't end there. At the conference we also had the chance to discover novelties like Dragon Age Inquisition, Fantasia Music Evolve and Project Spark, plus a few new titles to be added to the console's portfolio in the coming months, such as Ori and the Blind Forest, Phantom Dust and Scalebound.

Redmond's renewed efforts to attract independent developers to its platform merit their own mention. During the conference Microsoft showed extracts from some of the hundreds of games that will soon be available for Xbox One courtesy of ID@Xbox. The list includes promising titles like Inside, Cuphead and Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime as well as success stories like Plague Inc: Evolved and Threes!.

Like we said, if last year E3 was devoted to consoles, this year it had to be games. Sony saw it that way as well. The Japanese are hot on the trail again with an avalanche of announcements and releases. True, some of the trailers were about "recycled" games, but they also unveiled new versions of their best sagas and even some new franchises.   Right now, the situation for PlayStation 4 games is worse than for Xbox One games. In other words, there are fewer AAAs to play on PS4 than on Xbox, because the rollout for One was far better in terms of exclusives. But PlayStation still has a lot to boast about: multi-platform games look better (so far, at least) on PS4 than on Xbox One, it used to be the best-priced console on the market, and it really goes all out on indie games. And the latest E3 had to consolidate all that with games, hundreds of them. After all, isn't that precisely what console-owners want?

Exclusive new installments and new franchises

I have to say I was extremely impressed by a game so epic it was presented by Shuhei Yoshida no less (president of Sony's video game studios). It's the latest from the creators of Dark Souls and will be exclusive for PS4: Bloodborne. And, as everyone expected, we also discovered the new Uncharted 4: A Thief's End and even a DLC for inFamous Second Son, called inFamous First Light, a standalone which can be bought separately and doesn't need the original game. Sony and its partners also kept us entertained with announcements of a variety of third-party games. Funnily enough, last year Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes was at the Xbox One conference and this year The Phantom Pain was at PlayStation 4's. The battle for Kojima's work just goes on and on. And not only that: the passion for indie games was demonstrated yet again with announcements of an avalanche of new titles, like the fantastic No Man´s Sky and more, due to reach PS4 and no other consoles (though PC, yes). PlayStation Plus is something else that is growing non-stop and revealing its potential for both games and multimedia content. For example, a new series is set to arrive for PlayStation users exclusively, though subscribers to PS Plus will be able to view it "for free". And I really do admire that strategy of letting Far Cry 4 players invite friends to join in the game even if they don't own their own copy.

You can't get more user-friendly than that!

Sony may not have been the leader of the last generation but it's certainly at the vanguard of this one. It's crushing its rivals in North America, that all-important market for this industry, is setting the trend (with an Xbox that is looking more and more "like a PS4"), and controls a vast number of studios ready and waiting to pounce and show the world what they're capable of. What Playstation 4 was missing was games, lots of them, and now they're on their way. Best of all, they're exclusive titles, which although less advantageous for users allow Sony and Microsoft, and (above all) Nintendo, to exploit all the hype surrounding the "only-on-this-console" tag. What, with the arrival of PlayStation TV, PS Now, the remake of a classic like Grim Fandango, more social options such as direct broadcast on YouTube and the incredible gamble on free-to-play and indie games, not to mention the new long-awaited games announced, I'm betting that PlayStation 4 is right on course to becoming a runaway success. They're still even talking about PlayStation 3! Sony really knows what it's doing, as proved beyond all doubt with its PS4, and at this E3 it put everyone else in the shade. And let's not forget that the remastered The Last of Us hits the market on July 29.

Following its release in Japan, PlayStation TV now has an approximate date for its rollout in Europe, the United States and Canada. It will launch at the end of the year with a retail price of 99 dollars, for which you'll be able to run PS Vita games with a DualShock 4 and remotely control a PS4 in another room in the house. The device will also be available as a pack accompanied by a DualShock4 controller, HDMI cable, 8 GB card and a download code for the PS Vita game LEGO: The Movie. An interesting option for routing the video and control of your PS4 to another point of the house without having to move the console!

A lot has been happening on the Movistar TV scene in recent months. First there was its gamble on total or partial exclusives for major events like Formula 1 and MotoGP, and then came the broadcast of upcoming key football tournaments. According to a report in Expansión, Movistar is pulling out all the stops to turn its television service into a gambit for consolidating its customer base and boosting take-up of its fiber-based offerings. This is exactly what we saw with its latest upgrade of Fusion services and packages and the acquisition of Digital+, and now its gearing up for the imminent launch of more novelties related to content on demand. The two Movistar TV services due to launch in the coming months, as reported in Expansión, suggest the company is aiming to reinforce its position as the absolute leader in à la carte television. Its most tempting offer is likely to emulate the style of Netflix or Amazon in the USA: a flat monthly fee to access the complete list of series and movies for which the company has obtained rights. This wouldn't include new releases, especially of movies, as they will continue to be exploited in the pay-per-view mode and physical format for the first two years after their release. Another novelty that Movistar TV is preparing also looks quite interesting: namely, access, on payment of a fee, to specific events (episode of a series, football match or tennis tournament final) without being a subscriber of the package of channel offering it.

 

It might be nearly three months since Vodafone acquired ONO but the integration of the cable provider with the telecommunications giant is still far from complete. In fact, before it can even start with this process Vodafone will have to receive the green light from Brussels, which is due to make an announcement on July 2. But in spite of having to wait for authorization, it seems—in principle, at least—that there won't be any obstacles to overcome or major conditions to meet and Vodafone is already planning its future with the 7.1 million homes that have ONO coverage in the hope that come September it can launch convergent offers featuring its mobile telephony and the cable provider's fixed-line connections. When Vodafone made its bid for ONO it had every confidence that they would complement each other perfectly. The cable provider has a strong presence in the landline business with more than 1.5 million customers and over 7 million homes covered, while the British company has a strong customer base in the mobile telephony market to which it will now be able to offer ONO's fixed-line services. That is precisely the strategy that Vodafone is busy defining right now. According to elEconomista, once Europe approves the deal, and provided there are no major delays, the company could start offering combined rates for both services just after the summer, probably in September. So from then on we might see Vodafone offering convergent rates with higher ADSL speeds in places its optic fiber doesn't reach, still with limited coverage, therefore competing with Movistar, which aims to cover more than 10 million homes with its own fiber by the end of the year.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S is the new tablet that the Korean company has just released on the market, a device which they say is slimmer and lighter than any they have ever made. It comes in two sizes— 8.4 and 10.5 inches—and is their new "premium" tablet, ahead of the Galaxy Tab 4 presented a couple of months ago. News about it was leaked a week ago and the truth is that most of the details have now been confirmed. The star feature of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S is its AMOLED screen which, irrespective of the size, has a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels for both options and is particularly spectacular in the smaller version. There's no doubt that the main selling point of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S is the screen. It's made of a Super AMOLED panel, which is rare thing to see in the tablet market, and will be available in 8.4 and 10.5 inches, both with a resolution of 2560x1600 pixels which Samsung boasts will guarantee 90% of the RGB color spectrum. The device also comes with technologies like Adaptive Display to improve the visual experience. How they will perform? We won't know until we can hold one of these new devices in our hands. In addition to a highly appealing screen, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S also seems well endowed as regards the other features, suggesting that this is a high-end tablet. They're not going to be the most powerful on the market, but appealing enough to make it to the top end of the ranking. The processor will be either the Samsung Exynos 5 or Qualcomm Snapdragon 800, depending on the market and model, or rather connectivity. The 8.4 or 10.5 inches barely affect the other features, which are basically the same in both versions: the same SoC accompanied by 3 GB of RAM and 16 or 32 GB of storage (more space via microSD), cameras with 2.1 and 8 megapixels (front and rear, respectively), and a design which evidently follows the same line. There will be versions with either WiFi or WiFi+LTE connectivity, and as another star feature they will also have a fingerprint sensor like the Galaxy S5. The Galaxy Tab S comes with Android 4.4, as you would expect. But what really sets it apart is something we've already seen in a few of Samsung's earlier devices: the added value not only of its own apps (such as a personal information manager called Content Home) and the system interface, but a generous suite of "premium" contents as part of its Galaxy Gifts and which in the Galaxy Tab S mean subscriptions to certain services (like The Washington Post, WSJ, Marvel Unlimited and LinkedIn), complete games (Fruit Ninja), a few DLCs (Asphalt 8, Cut the Rope 2) and much more. It seems this strategy is going to be key for Samsung's Android device business. And still on the subject of software, Samsung has introduced the so-called Kids Mode, a special interface for children perhaps inspired by its Tab 3 Kids. And at just 6.6 millimeters it's one of the slimmest tablets on the market, regardless of whether it's the small or larger model. They're quite light as well, as you would imagine. Here are the key features of both sizes of the Galaxy Tab S:

 

	Galaxy Tab S 8.4	Galaxy Tab S 10.5
Dimensions	125.6x212x6.6 millimeters	177.3x247.3x6.6 millimeters
Weight (WiFi/WiFi+4G)	294/298 grams	465/467 grams
Battery	4900 mAh	7900 mAh

The design emulates the appearance of the Galaxy S5 with its dotted rear and also the two colors available, which in Spain will be called Bronce Titanio (Titanium Bronze) and Blanco Deslumbrante (Dazzling White). At the presentation today Samsung confirmed that the Samsung Galaxy Tab S will reach the market some time in July, both the 8.4 and the 10.5 inch versions. There'll be duo models with varying connectivity: some models will have 16 GB WiFi and others 16 GB WiFi+LTE, in both cases expandable via microSD and available in the aforementioned colors. In Spain the Samsung Galaxy Tab S will retail at €399 and €499 for the 8.4 and 10.5 inch models, respectively. It remains to be seen which of the two hardware varieties will reach this country, the one with the Exynos 5 or the one with Snapdragon 800.

Ever since Microsoft announced its acquisition of Nokia there has been a cloud of doubt over what would happen to the Nokia brand. Initially, it seemed it would be used in basic phones but not smartphones. It looked like the Lumia phones would still exist, but not even the companies themselves seemed able to give a clear answer. This week a rumor emerged from @evleaks, usually a very reliable source, but although it sheds some light on the matter it still doesn't clarify exactly what will happen to the Nokia brand in phones. The theory is that Microsoft will not use the Nokia brand for new products. The latest Lumia models, the 930 and the 630, were released just days before the acquisition was finalized, despite having been unveiled at the Microsoft Build conference, which is presumably why they bear the Nokia name even though it's Microsoft selling them. What might have a new brand, for example, is the possible McLaren with 3D gestures. It's likely to be presented by Microsoft Mobile and as such should bear a different name—Microsoft Lumia XXX or perhaps just Lumia XXX—at least in theory. The documents leaked by @evleaks also reveal, for example, that the Nokia stores and their care centers will continue to trade under the Finnish brand for the moment until they plan how to introduce the Microsoft name little by little. It will probably be the same story with apps and services like Nokia Music. Other minor details are the transition to the Segoe font, instead of Nokia Pure, in the documents produced by Microsoft Mobile, and the demise of the Nokia ringtones and the slogan "Connecting People" in the new cellphones. Curiously, they also recommend changing Twitter names if they contain the word Nokia and updating profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook. But we're still waiting for official confirmation about what will happen to the Nokia brand. When you think about it, it's only natural: Microsoft won't want to get rid of a name that still has a robust reputation among consumers. And it would probably be harder to persuade them to buy "a Microsoft phone".