News

You can't escape the IRS even in death and those who do try should be expecting a visit from the "semi-organic autonomous skull" agents of Skullduggery. In the game you play as an upstart collection agent for the Infernal Revenue Service who must seize assets from "deadbeats" who tried to beat the system by taking their riches with them to the afterlife. You do this by stretching your brain to snap your skull around various levels in the underworld.

The premise may be zany, but Skullduggery's gameplay is a lot like Angry Birds, or any other physics-based games available on the App Store. Unlike Angry Birds or Crush the Castle, the goal of the game is not to just knock stuff over, but it's more of a platform title where you pull back on your skull to slingshot yourself forward and through obstacles. Skullduggery offers a very easy one-touch playing experience, and its "Bullet Time" feature gives it a more fluid Matrix-like control where you can slow things down midair and change your trajectory. The controls are simple to master, and once you do, you will feel like you are playing any other platform game.

Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) highly anticipated wearable may face an uphill battle in Europe where, according to a survey, the populace doesn't appear to be interested in the Apple Watch, at least not nearly as much as Chinese and American consumers. The indifference likely stems from the fact that some of the most highly touted features of the device are old news in the Old World.

German market research group, GfK, conducted the survey, asking 1,000 smartphone owners from each market (Germany, UK, China, US, South Korea) about their interest in various smartwatch functions, assuming the device was completely secure.

The iPhone 6 has already seen record breaking sales since its September launch, and the numbers are poised to jump even higher as Apple expands to 36 new countries by the end of October, bringing the total to 69 countries/territories. The company plans for its flagship phone to be available in 115 countries by the end of the year.

Next up, and by far the most important as far as sales numbers are concerned, is China, whose telecom providers began offering pre-orders last Friday. If the estimates are correct, 20 million units have been pre-ordered already, which is twice the amount of iPhones that sold in the U.S. over the launch weekend. Both models will

Things are really heating up for Marvel Entertainment, Guardians of the Galaxy is the highest grossing film of 2014, and the internet is buzzing about Captain America 3 kicking off a Civil War storyline in the cinematic universe. Marvel has also teamed up with Kabam to create an Injustice-like fighting game called Contest of Champions for mobile devices.

Contest of Champions seems to be loosely based on the 1982 comic book series where The Collector uses various Marvel superheroes as pawns in a battle with The Elder of the Universe, the Grandmaster and Death. Players can create a team of any four heroes from the available 25 in the game to compete in a Quest mode or battle against other players in a Versus mode. The game features the typical fighting game style controls and each character comes equipped with three different special moves / powers.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) share prices continued to hover around $100 over the course of last week's trading. Tuesday saw the low close of the week at $98.75, but prices rallied from there and closed at $100.73 on Friday. There could be an uptick this Thursday following Apple's media event. The company is expected to, at the very least, unveil the next generation iPad Air and a 27 inch Retina display iMac. OS X Yosemite will likely be released to the public as well.

Perhaps the confidence in the latter half of the week resulted from Carl Icahn's extreme optimism. In a letter to Tim Cook titled "Sale: Apple Shares at Half Price," the billionaire investor urged Apple to buy back more stock at a faster pace. His reasoning lies in the fact that Icahn Enterprises' analysis of Apple concludes that the stock is "dramatically undervalued." By their numbers, Apple stock should be trading at around $203 per share.