Fully Charged: Metal Gear Solid Xperia devices, and Netflix saves you days’ worth of skipped adverts

Sony makes Metal Gear Xperias

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain may not be a PlayStation exclusive, but that’s not stopping Sony from going all out with promotional tie-ins. The company has revealed a line of branded devices, including an Xperia J1 Compact smartphone with a white backing and Outer Heaven logo from the game. It also has accompanying wallpaper, sound effects, and a ringtone preinstalled, and comes with a couple of cases.

The Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact and Xperia Z4 Tablet are treated much the same, meanwhile a pair of Walkman audio players are getting the sleek logo treatment as well: the entry-level A16 and the lossless ZX2. They will all be available on 2 September exclusively in Japan, with prices ranging between 28,000 yen (about £145) for the A16 and 140,000 yen (£720) for the ZX2.

[Source: Sony via SlashGear]

Netflix viewers save days missing ads

One of the best parts of watching Netflix is not having to deal with all the commercials every few minutes, right? But have you ever thought about how much time you’re really saving by watching uninterrupted streaming programming instead of ad-supported live broadcasts? Exstreamist did, and it crunched the numbers.

Given the recent estimate that Netflix viewers watch an average of 1.5 hours per day of the service, plus the average 15 minutes and 30 seconds of ads seen every hour on cable, the site estimates that Netflix is saving us 130 hours of time per year that would’ve been wasted watching ads.

That’s almost 5 1/2 days worth. It’s enough to watch several more seasons of original Netflix shows – or, you know, do something productive with your time. Whatever suits you. Hit the source link below for charts and further details on the analysis.

[Source: Exstreamist]

Amazon UK axes trade-ins

If you’ve gotten into the habit of sending Amazon your used games and books every so often, you’ll need to find another buyer: Amazon UK has decided to stop taking trade-ins on that media as of 31 August, although you can still try to sell your items directly to other users via Amazon Marketplace.

Why the change? No real explanation is given, but as both the game and book industries embrace digital more and more with each passing month, it’s likely that Amazon doesn’t want to keep adding to its stockpile of physical media.

[Source: Amazon UK via Engadget]

Pac-Man 256 released

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We’re just weeks out from the mobile release of Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, but there’s another new Pac-Man out this week – and you should be excited. It’s Pac-Man 256, and its biggest selling point is that it comes from the makers of the fantastic Crossy Road.

What’s the game like? Well, it’s not entirely unlike Crossy Road in being an endless free-to-play game, but here, you’ll guide Pac through a maze while the map behind him becomes a garbled mess of glitchy code, challenging you to pick the right paths and avoid the ghosts. The name is a reference to the original arcade game’s glitched end, and it looks like an ideal balance between homage and evolution. It’s free on both iOS and Android.

[Source: App Store and Play Store]