Microsoft’s big surprise at this year’s E3 was Live Anywhere cross platform gaming, where you basically connect your Vista PC with the Xbox360, you can play on a PC vs. someone playing on a Xbox360. Microsoft’s own Vista launch title, Halo2, apparently won’t be using any of those features, according to an article at 1UP.com. They claim it is simply too much work for Bungie, the developer, to do Halo 2 and Halo 3 at the same time.
But would it make sense for Microsoft to launch Live Anywhere without officially supporting it themselves? Even if it does take extra manpower, I still think there will be at least some Live Anywhere Halo 2 content.
Japanese online retailer PC-Success had listed the Nintendo Wii at 18,000 Yen, or US$160. Moments later the product was taken down, but some one captured a screenshot of the price. $160 seems “too” low even for Nintendo, so this is probably an error from PC-Success.
Researchers at US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have played around with the Cell processor, in order to find out if it’s any good for scientific purposes. The Cell CPU, made by IBM, Sony and Toshiba is also suitable for scientific research, mainly because of its great power. Currently only used to power the PlayStation 3, and in the future, IBM’s high-end servers. The Cell version used in the PS3 sports 8 cores running at 3.2 GHz, far more powerful than todays desktop CPUs.
Full article here (TheInquirer.net)
Speaking to MTV, Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed the rumors about the possibility of having your own face as a character in Wii Sports, just like Miyamoto, Iwata, and Reggie Fils-Aime during the E3 press conference. Shiggy said:
“Wii Sports” series features these little models which you can put your own faces on … and then you may start to see those characters, with faces you’ve created, appearing in different games on the Wii system.”
How this is done is still unclear, and what other games is Miyamoto talking about? It definitley sounds interesting.
Read the MTV interview here.
Seems that WoW isn’t the only MMORPG with cheating problems. GuildWars.com reports that over 1,000 accounts have been banned for cheating violations, namely using bots to do various tasks.
In our continuing efforts to preserve a solid game economy and to support the legitimate GuildWars player, we have been actively pursuing those who use “bots” in Guild Wars. In the last week, we have closed more than one thousand accounts of those using third-party programs, and we will continue to take similar action in the future.
A movie based on Bungie’s Halo game was originally scheduled for a Summer 2007 release, but now IMDb lists the movie with a “sometime 2008″ release date. The movie, still without a director, is produced by Peter Jackson and his WingNut Films production company. Microsoft paid Alex Garland (28 Days Later) $1 Million dollars to write the screenplay, and then sold it to universal for $10 Million.
Halo IMDb site
South Korea probably has the most extreme gamer culture in the world, where 2.4% of the population aged 9-34 are addicted to videogames. South Korea also has the the biggest professional league in the world, and of course dedicated TV channels showing nothing but videogames.
“I guess I knew I was becoming addicted, but I couldn’t stop myself, I stopped changing my clothes. I didn’t go out. And I began to see myself as the character in my games.”
says Kim, recalled from a clinic where he was undergoing counseling. In 2005, 10 teenagers died from playing video games for a long period of time without a break. In Taegu, South Korea, a 28-year-old man died after playing an online game for over 50 hours without a break.
Seems like we westerners have a lot of catching up to do.
Read more here. (Washington Post)
Rumors are going around that Sony is having trouble fitting the PS3 hardware into its smooth, curvy box. Leaked images of the dev kit show the size is just about a normal computer case. How Sony will fit that in the final case is unknown, one idea suggests further cutbacks on features like backwards capability. Like we didn’t have enough cutbacks from Sony since E3.
Earlier today Ubisoft released a patch for the new Hitman game, fixing a few bugs, most importantly performance improvement on low-end machines and crashes to desktop.
- Fix to the low performance problems that have been experienced on some hardware configurations.
- After extended play sessions game could crash to desktop when transitioning between levels.
- Items could become stuck in mid-air if game was saved and then loaded directly after a throwing action.
- Hitman Logo on Main Menu could disappear at 1280×720 resolution.
- Screen borders on cutscenes could be displayed badly at certain screen resolutions.
- Game could crash if menu is invoked on death sequence after a 3 headshot revival has been performed.
- Game could crash if when loading and saving within certain locations after making changes to render options.
- Fix to blurring of Weapon Upgrade Icons when running at LOW in render options.
- Fix for very occasional graphics corruption when using fibre-wire in 1st person and moving camera very quickly.
- Fix for slightly oversized Red dot scope zoom.
You can get the patch here (Mentalgamers).
Official site: www.hitmanbloodmoney.com
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Some guy managed to build a custom tilt sensor for his PSP, just like the one used inside the PlayStation 3 controllers.Watch him playing Mercury with the device.
