Thursday, April 28, 2005
New Halo 2 maps, and more Xbox 360 ...
- New Halo 2 multiplayer maps
- More Xbox 360 hardware info
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NEWS:
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- New Halo 2 multiplayer maps
- So, you can get the first of the new Halo 2 multiplayer maps on Xbox Live. Two fo the maps ("Warlock" and "Containment") are free, and "Turf" and "Sanctuary" are "Premium Content" that will set you back US $5.99.
- "Warlock" is based on the Halo Combat Evolved map, "Wizard" (hey, I just got that -- "Wizard" ... "Warlock" ... Those Bungie guys ...). "Containment" is absolutely massive, "Warlock" is smallish, and though "Turf" is largish, it's complex, and great for one-on-one player (better than Ivory Tower) or Big Team.
- It's up to you as to whether you buy the premium content, but remember there are 5 more maps on the way, and when all is said and done, you'll probably save a couple of bucks over the retail disc version that will be on sale June 28. But the retail disc version will have two new videos (an animated, non-playable side-story from the single-player story in New Mombasa) and "a mini-documentary that includes interviews with the map designers, combat strategies and fly-throughs of the new maps." So, it looks the Xbox faithful on Live get shorted. Hmmm ...
- More Xbox 360 hardware info
- After the recent leak of what looks like the definitive Xbox 360, picts have leaked out of what look to be the memory cards. What's interesting to me is the labeling of the card as "64M", indicating their may be multiple sizes of cards available. Plus it makes the 64Mb version look like a Nintendo 64 cartridge. And I find that funny.
- In addition, NEC did confirm this week Xbox 360 will use their embedded DRAM (eDRAM) technology. In essence, this can be used as embedded video RAM for the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) to use as a frame buffer, enabling incredible hi-def graphics. "HD-Era", indeed ...
- In the middle of the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2005 (WinHEC, which ended today, and yeah, I'm guessing it's as sexy as it sounds), Microsoft revealed some Xbox 360 goodness. Sounds like the Xbox 360 controller is going to be Longhorn (MS's next operating system) compatible. Looks like Microsoft is making good on their XNA promises for single gaming APIs between Microsoft-enabled PCs and Xboxes.
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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Xbox 360 revealed!
Check out the fine boys in green over at TeamXbox.com, and the recently revealed picts of Xbox 360.
The top two picts are new, and the third is the leaked pict from the ourcolony.net shenanigans.
The second and third picts may be showing the port for a removable hard drive.
But check this front shot. Notice there are two memory unit slots on the box itself (rather than on the controllers themselves). Also, note what looks like a single port for a wired controller. This could lend credence to the idea that the new Xbox could support wireless controllers out of the box. It could indicate Microsoft is thinking of something along the lines of the PS2 multi-tap (which would suck, but does make a compelling additional revenue stream. It could mean both; seriously, you think you're not going to give an option to support multiple legacy wired controllers (assuming legacy controllers are supported at all).
Of course, this could be the IR eye, but I think it's a controller port.
Gonna be an interesting couple of weeks ...
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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Halo 2 update, Nintendo online, and "one GameStop to rule them all ..."
- Halo 2 update available
- Nintendo finally recognizes network gaming
- GameStop is buying EBGames
- Oddworld Inhabitants is getting out of the game biz
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NEWS:
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- Halo 2 update available
- Starting yesterday, Bungie started rolling out an autoupdate for Halo 2. The auto-update is free, improves online gameplay, fixes "all known bugs", and addresses cheats and glitches. Given the traditional immutable nature o' console titles, this update is a big deal -- and has been long coming just due to the amount of testing that needs to go in to the download.
- A high-level summary of what's included in the update (full breakdown here):
- Weapon Tweaks: Increased damage by all melee attacks; grenades are more "realistically" powerful (more like Halo CE); reduced bullet damage and dual-wielding accuracy of the Magnum (bummer); and normalizing the Plasma Rifle/SMG combo when compared with other weapons combos
- Cheats and Glitches: Allows detailed monitoring of online gameplay (cheaters will be found); addressed known exploited cheats (flag bouncing, sword-flying, stationary "ghost" avatar, "ghost" weapons, the modem standby button cheat (I hate the bastards that use this), and cheats exploitable by hosts); and addressed unknown, but internally identified cheats that could potentially be exploited. Cheating has become so prevalent, that Bungie has questioned the credibility of the leaderboards, and is considering resetting everyone's standings over the next several weeks. And all of you cheaters are keeping Bungie from being fully focused on on Halo 3!
- Nintendo finally recognizes network gaming
- OK, so Nintendo seems to trying to do a big ol' retraction. After Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto said in November of last year that online play was "of no interest" to gamers, Broadcom Corporation announced a strategic partnership to integrate Broadcom wireless solutions into Nintendo's next generation gaming systems. Specifically, Nintendo's so-called "Revolution" console was named.
- GameStop is buying EBGames
- Oddworld Inhabitants is getting out of the game biz
- Criminy. After the original Oddworld sleeper hit created a cult and critical franchise, Oddworld Inhabitants' latest entry, Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath was critically succesful, but a commercial disappointment. Following that, president and creative director Lorne Lanning told the Hollywood Reporter Oddworld Inhabitants will be moving away from video games, and primarily focus on using intellectual properties for movie and TV projects. They've closed their San Luis Obispo, California development offices and downsized as they moved to the Bay Area.
- Lanning went so far as to blame publisher Electronic Arts for not fully supporting the single-platform title.
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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.
Monday, April 11, 2005
The next Xbox will be revealed May 12, and buy it in November ...
- Next Xbox will be revealed May 12 on MTV
- Buy your Xbox 360 in November?
- May OXM rocks!
- ourcolony.net updates
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NEWS:
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- Next Xbox will be revealed May 12 on MTV
- Color me impressed.
- So, Microsoft Corp. won't be announcing their next version of the Xbox at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next month. They'll be announcing it 4 days earlier -- to the world, via culture pipe MTV: Music Television.
- MTV and Microsoft Corp. announced they'll be unveiling the next-gen Xbox on MTV channels in the United States, Asia Pacific and Europe (within a 24-hour window).
- The half-hour "MTV Presents: The Next Generation Xbox Revealed" will be hosted by sometime hobbit and Xbox nut Elijah Wood, and showcase a ton of celebrities. The special will show the debut of next-gen games, and an Xbox experience that is "always connected, always personalised and always in high definition". Afterwards, MTV.com will have a bunch of additional content in the form of behind-the-scenes video, photos and "other special extras".
- Drawing first blood in the next-gen war by getting their box out first to the general worldwide public is absolutely, stunningly brilliant. I am curious as to whether they'll actually show the new hardware, or just what it can do, saving the former for E3. We shall see.
- Worldwide times for the special follow:
- Buy your Xbox 360 in November?
- So, the rumor has been that Xbox 360 (for the love of all that's holy, change the name) will ship this holiday season. Now, Electronic Arts announced Need for Speed Most Wanted. The top of the press release says, "A New Racer Hits the Streets This November", while buried at the bottom it says the game "will be available for a next generation console as well as" [the current crop of everything else]. Hmmm ...
- May OXM rocks!
- If you don't subscribe to the Official Xbox Magazine -- what the hell is wrong with you?
- That said, pick up the May issue. The demo disc has playable Doom 3 (single player, Xbox Live Co-op, and Live/System-Link deathmatch); Pariah, new Digital Extremes IP looking to shake up the FPS world; and sleepers Psychonauts (OXM's "Best Platformer"); and Darkwatch, which'll show us what High Moon Studios is capable of out of the gate. (Hey, if you want to actually play the Darkwatch, there's a glitch; to get around it, "make sure the network cable is disconnected from the back of the Xbox if you are an Xbox Live subscriber. Then simply change the clock on your Xbox settings screen to show March 1, 2005 and reinsert the disc." Methinks OXM DVD editor Dave Rees was overly awed by this month's offerings, and missed a QA step.)
- ourcolony.net updates
- So, this ourcolony.net thing is interesting. It's a much more interactive ARG than the ilovebees weirdness, and is getting a ton of play.
- The forums were annoying as hell, which initially led me to feel like the same idiots I don't like playing with on Xbox Live were the same griefer and whiner idiots on the ourcolony.net forums. There was no apparent moderating, but any of us who had started colonies had the power to delete any and all posts or topics.
- Just as I was getting tired of it, the forums were removed, and a new message was added to the front page: "you [sic] survived through Chaos the way i hoped you would. you read the rules and complied. where no rules existed, you made 'em up. you made the site your own, and together endured the rigors of Chaos ..."
- Now, you could argue The Powers That Shall Go Unnamed were just reacting to what happened. However, even after I saw the structure (or lack thereof) of the forums, I could guess what was going to happen.
- There were a couple of images hidden in the website images directory, then when pasted together, made what looked like a close-up of of a new Xbox controller. Then some new pictures showed up in the TeamXbox forums.
- What's interesting to me is this could be the mother of all reverse Alternate Reality Games (mainly because I think it would be the first one). The ourcolony.net site has pictures of some of the ant logos pasted all over the Sony Metreon, with PSP adverts in the background. The new picts over at TeamXbox.com show the "new" controller on the screen of a PSP, showing the whole PSP and the Sony logo. Why all of the Sony plugs, if this is supposed to be an ARG for the next Xbox? Hmmm ...
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SOURCES: Gamespot.com, joystiq.com, kotaku.com, Xbox.com, IGN, GameInformer, Official XBox Magazine, CNN, gamesindustry.biz, and others.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Join my colony; Updated Xbox 360 announcements
- Join my colony
- Updated Xbox 360 announcements
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NEWS:
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- Join my colony
- I want you to join my colony. Details follow.
- OK, so it looks like the folks behind the Halo 2 "ilovebees" Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is back, this time hyping the Xbox 360.
- Like "ilovebees", the new "ourcolony" ARG/viral marketing introduces another communal insect -- the ant -- as its metaphorically weighty logo. The ant has been appearing in flyers all over the world, was plastered over SF's Sony Metreon during Sony's PSP lauch, and Chief XNA architect and Microsoft corporate vice president J Allard ws sporting the logo for a brief cameo on the demo of the new Xbox gamer card.
- What else? Well, there's a countdown clock ticking away to May 12 -- 4 days before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) kicks off. And Allard said at GDC that Microsoft will be revealing the next Xbox at E3.
- So, there are some cryptic messages in the ourcolony.net website, not least of which includes the admonition, "You're not going to make it to the end if you try to solo this,
there's strength in numbers
be diverse with your people and thoughts
don't forget to collaborate."
- Given that, I'm asking you to join my colony. After you receive an invitation from me, go to www.ourcolony.net website, and add yourself to the "Xbox Now" colony. Enter "play" in the first empty field, then join a colony on the next screen by entering the password 51298371. Contact me if you need me to send an invitation.
- This is an intriguing viral marketing campaign, because if it truly is an ARG for Xbox 360, and somebody's not asleep at the switch, this is a huge way to build new, massive clans at the launch of the new console. Brilliant.
- A word of warning: One thing that separates this from the "ilovebees" travesty (and makes me question whether this is truly an ARG for Microsoft), is the servers aren't scaling to the demand for the site. The first couple of days saw abysmally slow loads, colony-related error messages, and (maybe) a wee bit of frustration. Please stick with it -- I want you in my colony. But yeah, this could be the thing that kills what could have been an incredible viral marketing campaign.
- Updated Xbox 360 announcements
- CNN's Game-Over column is one of many pre-E3 articles that make it sound like this year's industry hype may have some real substance behind it.
- Of course, of interest to me is columnist Chris Morris's projections about the next Xbox, which he firmly believes will be call "Xbox 360" (more's the pity). He restates some things that're "old" (and I've talked about) as far as all games optimized for high-def televisions and every games having some sort of online capability. Morris also thinks a hard drive is still possibility, and he's not counting out backwards compatibility.
- He also mentions more of the probable launch titles, including Perfect Dark Zero from Rare, and some others I've mentioned.
- Also, check out Morris's article, "A wish list for Xbox 2" -- I hope Microsoft is listening.
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
No Soul Caliber love? Xbox 360 getting a lotta love ...
- No Soul Caliber Love?
- Xbox 360 is getting a lotta love
- How many miss-steps for Sony?
- New Releases of note
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NEWS:
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- No Soul Caliber Love?
- Namco announced that Soul Caliber III is going to be a Sony Playstation 2 exclusive launching in 2005, and may launch on the PS2 before on arcades -- a first for the franchise. The franchise will introduce customizeable characters and a "museum" retrospective mode.
- One of the more hotly anticipated games of 2004 (and arguably responsible for the resurrection of the fighting franchise), Soul Caliber II brought Todd MacFarlane's character Spawn only to Xbox. Let's hope this nin"PS2-exclusive" is a time-bound (a la Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas). While we're at it, let's make it a time-exclusive for PS2, and then an Xbox 360-exclusive. That would rock. And, yes, I would be small about it ...
- Xbox 360 is getting a lotta love
- OK, so there's the Soul Caliber III announcement suckage, but Xenon/Xbox Next/Xbox 360/Xbox Now (I'm holding out that they'll pick my name) is looking to rock on first- and third-party support. Aside from the Ubisoft stuff a mentioned a couple of weeks ago, and the Bethesda Oblivion announcements, here's a brief rundown:
- The next-gen 'box my have an EyeToy-like motion sensing camera or peripheral.
- There's nothing like first-party love for a platform, and though Nintendo still reigns as king (with 8 out of 10 platform best-sellers developed in-house), Microsoft is stepping up for the next (hopefully smaller) black box (or silver; we'll see). Head of Microsoft Game Studios Shane Kim confirmed the existing franchises Halo, Fable, Project Gotham Racing, and new franchises Jade Empire and Forza Motorsport will be on the next version of the Xbox, as well as "new and unique intellectual" property.
- Majesco Games (the most impressive re-invented publisher of 2004) and Starbreeze Studios (the geniuses behind the incredible The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay) have officially announced The Darkness, Top Cow's fan-favorite comic book. "Union Entertainment, a feature film and video game production company, packaged the deal which includes Paul Jenkins" who'll provide the story and dialogue.
- Then there's the console backbone making a switch to Xbox's next offering: Final Fantasy's Hironobu Sakaguchi; Space Channel 5 creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi; and Game Republic's Yoshiki Okamoto. Okamoto went so far as to say "a powerful fleet of Japanese designers" have signed on for Xbox 360.
- Say what you want about Sega after the Dreamcast downturn (the most under-rated system of all time), and letting go of up-and-coming powerhouse Sammy Studios, Inc. after the Sega/Sammy merger (It's now High Moon Studios). But these guys know how to make games! They've consistently shown early love (Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller); Innovative love (Jet Set Radio Future, Iron Phoenix, Otogi); Classic love (Sonic Mega Collection Plus); and now, Next-Gen love (Condemned).
- Of course, there are rumors swirling around too, ranging from the next-gen Tomb Raider, to Quake IV, to Nintendo franchises on Microsoft's hardware.
- How many miss-steps for Sony?
- So, Dual-Shock is a core ceature of PlayStation controllers, but it looks like the little piece of technology may belong to someone else. In March, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California entered judgment in favor of California-based Immersion Corp., and "issued a permanent injunction against the manufacture, use, sale, or import into the United States of the infringing Sony PlayStation system including PlayStation consoles, Dual Shock controllers, and the 47 games found by the jury to infringe Immersion's patents." Oh, and a $90 million fine. As a footnote, Microsoft chose to settle with Immersion for $20 million for a "perpetual patent license", $6 million invested in the company, and an allowance for Immersion to borrow as much as $9 million more through a "convertible debenture arrangement".
- Sony shorted console sales during the Christmas season, and had to resort to airlifting units into the U.S., which still shorted demand, cut into their profits, and hurt holiday numbers for the entire game industry.
- Despite a somewhat strong marketing campaign, Sony's PSP (gaming launch dramatically shorted units in some markets. Additionally, complaints about dead-pixel handling policy makes me thing Sony didn't negotiate adequate fiscal deals with their vendors in relation to QA, and may be eating profit on replacement units in order to maintain good PR.
- Sony canceled an expected Japanese PS3 event in Japan at the nth hour, and is recanting whether they'll unveil PS3 details prior to E3.
- Changes in management are hurting Sony, too. Ken Kutaragi (THE driving force behind PlayStation), was rumored to be the next in line for CEO. Then he was demoted, and a Brit (Sir Howard Stringer) was put in the position. Stinger's background is in its media division, and he has nil experience with Sony's hardware. If Kutaragi stays on and Stringer leverage's his impressive legacy, things may pan out fine; if Kutaragi storms off, things could be bad indeed.
- What about non-exclusive PS3 technology? That'd suck. For Sony. Big Blue announced they'll be offering custom design services to help integrate the Cell processor developed for the PS3 into technology offerings. While touted as "an example of IBM offering innovation on demand -- helping manufacturers in a variety of industries solve their most challenging technical problems and create entirely new products," someone was asleep at the Sony PR switch. This potentially waters down the perception of the powerful brain behind Sony's next gen bad boy being anything special.
- New Releases of note
- March
- Star Wars: Republic Commando (I've played this; single player makes me squeak like a joyful fanboy; multiplayer is pretty mheh.)
- Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (the new standard in WWII shooters)
- Phantom Dust (a port of a Japanese RPG-ish fighter -- over Xbox Live!)
- TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (with Live play and a map maker!)
- Dragon Ball Z: Sagas (the franchise finally comes to Xbox -- with co-op play; it's a shame they didn't make it Live co-op ...)
- Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (redefining Live and co-op and Live co-op all at the same time)
- April
- Doom 3 (Live co-op is just for Xboxers; sorry, PC Suckahs!)
- LEGO Star Wars (it's the geek equivalent of peanut butter and chocolate, but doesn't go right to my thighs)
- Close Combat: First to Fight (Squad based military, built under the direction of the U.S. Marines)
- Jade Empire (BioWare's new RPG; can they re-do the KOTOR success? Playing the demo says "yes")
- Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (early builds made this prettier than Halo 2, and the third-person melee in the demo kicks pou-pou)
- Psychonauts (The Xbox needs more good platformers, and this looks to be an incredible little sleeper (hah, I made a funny! See, 'cause it's about a guy who does battle in people's dreams, and ...)
- Raze’s Hell (An action shooter where you kill all things cute, because, as in life, horribly cute things are horribly evil (damn you, Hello Kitty!)
- Predator: Concrete Jungle (because something needs to resurrect the franchise from Aliens vs. Predators)
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