Real rock stars have trailers where their instruments are stored and transported between gigs. Unfortunately for those of us whose only venues are our living rooms with audiences consisting solely of friends, family and pets we have to store our instruments somewhere else. While most game controllers are easily stored in a drawer or basket next to a console or game library the Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments are much bulkier.
Right now Amazon has a sizeable discount on a combination ottoman and storage area. It’s called the AK Rockbox and it can hold two guitars, a drum kit and a microphone, everything you need to virtually tour the world. Interestingly it’s not only designed to store your equipment, it’s also got a built-in mechanism to easily raise and lower the drum kit for access while you play. Right now it’s discounted from its original price of $299.99 to $182.32.
In case you’re currently playing Left 4 Dead on your PC you be interested in the upcoming patch the game will get later his week. Just go to Steam and get it. What will it bring? We have no idea yet but since they decided to patch things up you should definitely take them up on that.
Chet Faliszek, the developer said that”this patch got larger than we would have liked and that really snowballed the time it is taking”, and that “the patch should be out this week”. Don’t forget to let us know how the patch worked for you!
via shackreviews
Nearly everything comes with warning labels nowadays. Cigarettes warn us about cancer and birth defects; coffee warns us of its potential for scalding, plastic bags warn us that they can be a suffocation risk and California congressman Joe Baca wants to put similar labels on video games.
He cites research studies that show a link between child aggression and video games and claims that the Consumer Product Safety Commission needs to mandate that video game publishers include this label on games rated T or higher: “WARNING: Excessive exposure to violent video games and other violent media has been linked to aggressive behavior.”
Unfortunately for the congressman the jury is still out on whether there’s a real link between them, because despite all the studies that frequently get talked about which link violence and video games, there are many others that show little or no relationship between the two.
Microsoft seems to be going the Sony route, according to Entertainment and Devices Division chief Robbie Bach, who has assured that the company is going to stick with the Xbox 360 for a longer period than the original Xbox, which was replaced in just four years.
“Just coming up with something that’s faster and prettier isn’t going to be sufficient,” Bach said. “The life cycle for this generation of consoles, and I’m not just talking about Xbox, I’d include Wii and PS3 as well, is probably going to be a little longer than previous generations.”
He adds that the economic downturn will also play a part in the lifespan of consoles, noting that consumers are now reluctant to make large investments, but that software continues to sell well.
The Xbox 360 has also been doing well, seeing increased sales during the holiday season, and Microsoft reporting a lifetime sales of 28 million.
A Vampyre Story is one of the few adventure games released in the last couple of years that is truly worth it. Created by Bill Tillers Autumn Moon Entertainment, the game is both charming and fun to play, with interesting and consistent characters throughout.
Keeping that in mind, hopes for a sequel can now be raised, as Bill Tiller the creator himself has spoken about multiple sequels for the budding franchise. Heres a bit: “We won’t get to meet Shrowdy’s mom until A Vampyre Story 4, though she makes a brief appearance at the end of the credits in A Vampyre Story 3.”
Tiller also talks about the game, working at LucasArts, art styles and more in IncGamers’ interview.
The upcoming server mergers for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the much-hyped MMO, will result in a total of 18 global servers, down from 49 worldwide. This comes after the initial merger of the Bloodspire and Hyperborea servers on January 17; the developer saw no issues and has unveiled the next phase.
The mergers were announced soon after the game’s original director left due to dissatisfaction with the project. Craig Morrison, the new director, has said that the mergers would “ensure the best gameplay experience.”
Funcom notes in this forum post that it hopes to merge the European servers in one go and the US servers in another. No timeline was provided, though.
Striking at the heart of American sports-lovers, Sony Electronics and the Yankees announced that they have signed an agreement designating Sony the official consumer electronics manufacturer of the Yankees. This will come into effect with the inauguration of the new-and-improved Yankee Stadium on April 16.
Sony will get prominent advertisement on the right-field wall, as well as a number of diorama ads in the concourse. The stadium will also get over 550 Bravia LCD televisions for the suites and a PS3 gaming area in the park’s “Strike Zone”.
Who knows what Sony will do next…
It’s sad enough to see people so caught up in the world of video games that they eschew friends, family and normal social situations, but when violence gets involved it’s much, much worse. Recently Daniel Petric, a teen from Ohio, shot his parents after they confiscated his copy of Halo 3 (which they’d forbidden him to buy). His father survived the shooting, which Petric had attempted to make look like a murder-suicide by putting the gun into his father’s hand after he had shot both of them.
As one might expect, the lawyers attempted to blame the crime on Petric’s video game addiction, which had something to do with why his parents instructed him not to buy Halo 3. They were going for the insanity defense, but the murder-suicide plot and the fact that Petric admitted to thinking about killing his parents in the weeks before the crime generally eroded his claim of insanity and he was convicted.
Daniel Petric now faces sentencing with life in prison without parole as the maximum sentence. While this is a terrible tragedy and I send my sympathies to Mr. Petric and his family, it’s good to see that the spirit of accountability is still alive in a country that’s all together too quick to blame others.
While filesharing programs like Napster helped get people acclimated to the idea of digital music as a true alternative to physical media, iTunes undoubtedly has dominance over music sales. Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix has expressed a desire to create an alternative method of buying music.
They’d like to explore the idea of bundling songs together, not just including several Rock Band tracks in one package as they’ve done in the past, but including a copy of a song for use on your computer or MP3 player of choice. He admits that this would “change the tenor” of their relationship with the record labels, but there are likely some other hurdles that would have to be overcome before this is a truly viable business model.
The two biggest problems I can see is how to get the music onto something other than the console, as none of the current consoles are set up to act as a storage library for MP3 players and the appeal of getting a regular version of the song along with the Rock Band track would be limited if you could only listen to it from that console and to simply allow it to be downloaded from a website with a user name would bring up copyright issues. Secondly many gamers might want more of an album or artist than the handful of songs offered up on Rock Band, so they’d be more likely to simply purchase the album elsewhere.
It’s been more than two years since Twilight Princess was released in 2006 and since Nintendo makes a significant portion of their profits from flagship characters like Mario and Link, it’s only a matter of time before we see a new Zelda game. Thanks to the transparency of patent law in this country a patent has been discovered that hints at a new adventure for Link. The patent bears the weighty name of Shigeru Miyamoto and suggests that Nintendo may be trying to do with the Zelda series what they did with Mario Kart Wii.
While many third party Wii games are shovelware or mini-game fests designed to make a quick buck from the casual crowd, Nintendo is striving to create rich game experiences that are deep and complex enough for the more serious crowd while still having the intuitive and fun controls that keep casual gamers from being frustrated. Luckily someone has done the work of translating the lengthy legalese of the patent into actual English for us.
The description outlines a game which has several methods of playing. The first is obviously for gaming veterans and those who desire the most challenging experience; it allows the player to go through the main story from start to finish with an optional hint system. The second mode, ‘digest’ mode allows the player to view the game as a sort of interactive movie. It will play through the important gameplay sequences and cutscenes in the game, allowing the player to stop it at any time and play through the ‘scene’ they’re on with the equipment and powers that the protagonist has acquired. The third mode allows you to skip to whatever puzzle or scene you want to play, allowing anyone to replay their favorite part of the game or to practice on a rather difficult section.
There’s no official confirmation what game this will be, but the game is called “Legend of OO”, and the mock screenshots they show look very similar to screens from Twilight Princess. Miyamoto has also said in the past that it was important to bring the Zelda game to the casual crowd, so all signs point to a Legend of Zelda game.
