It's not doing anything crazy like lowering the price, but it looks like Mad Catz is at least set to give fighting game fans a few more options when it comes to choosing their peripheral of choice. As usual, the headliner is the company's Tournament Edition fightstick, which dials things back after the explosion of color on the Comic-Con exclusive edition, but otherwise remains identical inside and out. Those that honed their Street Fighter skills on their SNES or Genesis can also now choose from a new range of fightpads, featuring artwork with your choice of M. Bison, Guile, Zangief, C. Viper, Cammy, or Sagat. No firm release date just yet, but the whole lot should be out sometime this fall for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with the fightstick setting you back the usual $149.99, and the fightpads running a considerably more affordable $39.99 apiece.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Mad Catz announces 'Round Two' Street Fighter IV fightpads and fightstick originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Poor RIM. One or two analysts lower your stock rating from “buy” to “neutral” (or the equivalent), and then your stock drops some 16 percent. You know who to blame, too: it's those busybodies at Apple and Palm, what with their iPhones and Palm Pres eating into your bottom line. (Never mind that your own “iPhone killer” was sorta meh.) What is RIM to do?

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Ski season is rapidly approaching, and resorts will soon be releasing their lift ticket prices (if they haven’t already). But this year, some skiers will have a new option when it comes to buying their tickets: discounted pricing for off-peak days, thanks to a startup called Liftopia. Today the company has annouced that it closed a $1 million Series B funding round led by Erik Blachford (CEO of Terrapass, Former CEO of Expedia) and Amicus Capital, with a number of investors from the company’s Series A round also participating.

Liftopia allows ski resorts to offer variable pricing for tickets based on much how traffic they anticipate seeing on the slopes — in other words, resorts can lower their prices if they think they’re going to have a slow day the same way an airline does if a flight might not fill up. Some resorts have been able to do this to a limited extent with ‘peak season’ tickets (a ticket for Christmas time would cost more than one a month or two later), but up until now they haven’t had a good way to adjust their pricing on a daily basis. Liftopia gives them this option.

From the consumer’s standpoint using Liftopia is easy, and will be familiar to anyone who has ever purchased a plane ticket online. Pick a region, a resort to look at, and a date range, and the site will present a list of tickets, some of which are discounted as much as 60% (there’s also a flexible date option).

The site launched back in 2006, but initially saw slow growth due to industry skepticism. Since then things have been picking up — by last spring the site had grown to include around 65 resort partners, and Liftopia will have over 120 in time for this season.

Among the new resorts to sign on this year:

• Whistler/Blackcomb, BC
• Killington, VT
• Mammoth, CA
• Winter Park, CO
• Copper Mountain, CO
• Stowe, VT

Liftopia seems to be really picking up steam, and it’s a win/win for skiers who get to save money as well as for resorts, who can boost sales when they need too. There’s one small caveat for now though: because few resorts have finalized their pricing for this year, Liftopia’s inventory will be limited for the next few weeks, so you may need to check back later to book your tickets.

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We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget question is coming to us from Jimmy, who's making it his business to find out what phone currently on the market is best for business.

"I'm in the market for a new phone and money isn't a limitation. I'm also not partial to any particular US carrier, but here are some of the features I'd like to have: WiFi, GPS, good coverage in lots of places, push Gmail (a must!), physical keyboard (a must!), a touchscreen, decent battery life and a relatively slim body. And please, nothing that has a fruit logo on it. No offense to the fruit fans, though. Thanks!"

We've a feeling you started something Jimmy, and we're not so sure we're going to like the outcome. At any rate, we'd ask the dear readers to chime in here with a little help, and if you really had "iPhone 3GS" on the tip of your tongue, feel free to list it anyway -- but your reasoning better be really, really good.

Filed under: Ask Engadget

Ask Engadget: What's the best business phone out there? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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