SimCity is making its way to Mac, as promised, but now EA has put a specific date on when that will happen. The city-building simulator will arrive on OS X June 11, EA revealed in a press release today, at which time those who have purchased the game for PC on either Origin or as a physical boxed copy will be able to download Mac-compatible version, too.

The news comes shortly after EA re-enabled Cheetah Speed, which it had disabled earlier to ease server congestion problems. EA also announced that it is working on a major 2.0 update for SimCity at the same time, though it isn’t clear exactly what would be included in that release.

https://twitter.com/simcity/statuses/321756225991753728

I always wanted but never got a Virtual Boy, but I’m glad I waited since the Oculus Rift looks like a much better goggle-based gaming platform. The gadget got the teardown treatment over at iFixit today, thanks to a developer edition secured by the site. The Rift was remarkably easy to pull apart, earning it a very high repairability score. Rare for an iFixit teardown, the Oculus Rift one also includes some hands-on gameplay before the team pops the case.

iFixit offers a great video of the view from inside the Rift, showing exactly how it manages the 3D effect by offsetting the image slightly for each eye, which are then combined by your brain and give the illusion of depth. The rest of the teardown shows the Rift’s core parts, like the 1280×800 resolution LCD that outputs the 640×800 image to each eye, supplied by Taiwan’s Chimei Innolux. iFixit dubs this “good news,” as Chimei Innolux is Taiwan’s largest LCD supplier.

Other key components include the ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller with a 72MHz CPU (most processing is handled by the host computer, of course), and there are a variety of motion, acceleration and gyroscope sensors on board to help the device follow and compensate for changes in head movement.

Microsoft’s next Xbox, which could get an initial unveiling as early as next month, will use an AMD system-on-a-chip according to a new Bloomberg report. The new AMD SoC will mean that Microsoft is moving to an x86-based system architecture, which Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 4 is also adopting. The change is great news for AMD, and for gamers, and bad news for AMD’s chief rival Intel.

The new Microsoft console will be running a “Jaguar” CPU, which is also what’s going into Sony’s PS4, alongside a Radeon graphics processor from ATI, an AMD subsidiary. The similarity between the two SoCs employed in each next-gen console should go a long way toward silencing complaints from developers that it’s too difficult and resource-intensive to develop for each type of console. A shared x86 architecture means that it’ll be much easier to port titles, both between consoles and from the PC.

For AMD, it means gaining access to a much bigger chunk of the console gaming industry, at a crucial juncture: the desktop and notebook PC market is shrinking, facing increasing encroachment from devices like the iPad, meaning there’s less room to vie with Intel for market share in a space where Intel already clearly dominates. The console industry hasn’t exactly been a shining beacon of growth itself, but with a hardware refresh imminent, AMD is in the best position to capitalize should consumer interest once again be caught by fancy new console devices.

Microsoft announced today via its blog that it will be selling its Mediaroom properties to Ericsson, in a deal that will see Ericsson become the dominant IPTV player in the industry with over 25 percent market share. Mediaroom operates as a pretty much separate company from Microsoft, with its own HQ in Mountain View and around 400 employees, and powers TV offerings like AT&T U-verse, as well as services from Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica and Telus. The deal clears the deck for Microsoft fo go all-in on Xbox as the focal point of its own TV efforts.

At Ericsson, Mediaroom will continue to operate essentially as per usual, with that company investing in growing the business, while at Microsoft, the sale allows Microsoft to dedicate “all TV resources to Xbox in a continued mission to make it the premium entertainment service that delivers all the games and entertainment consumers want,” Microsoft said in its blog post. The company also intends to partners with studios, labels, networks and operators to help accomplish that mission, and says it hopes to help usher in a future where TV becomes “more simple, tailored and intelligent.”

Microsoft built Mediaroom into the industry leader in IPTV after its introduction as Microsoft TV, which evolved into the Mediaroom platform in 2007. It’s the middleware that powers set-top boxes from a variety of manufacturers, and also has a home in the Xbox 360, which uses it to act as a set-top box for service from some IPTV operators, including AT&T and Telus.

Console wars are a complex and many-parted affair, and Sony has launched its full salvo, with all eyes now on Microsoft to see what kind of return shot they can manage. The next-generation Xbox, codenamed Durango, will apparently get a preview at a special event in May, The Verge’s Tom Warren reports, with an official splashy unveiling at E3 in June.

Sony has already introduced its PS4 without formally introducing it, a move that was ridiculed by some in the Xbox camp, including Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb, who took to Twitter to mock the no-show show back in February. The Xbox event had originally been planned for April 24, according to the Verge’s sources, but will instead push that to May 21. It’s unclear what exactly the company will be showing off in May vs. what it’ll demo at E3, but Hryb’s comments tend to suggest we’ll get eyes on some actual hardware.

The home console market is one that has been relatively well-guarded against disruption from newcomers and startups for decades now, and recent reviews of the earliest shipping versions of the OUYA Android-powered home gaming console suggest that they aren’t likely to be knocked off their lofty perch by any upstarts just yet. There seems to be a general decline in interest in console gaming overall, but new players aren’t responsible for that so much as a general shift in the way consumers enjoy and look for games.