Nintendo released a recent update that once again tries to secure some existing bugs on the console, breaks some things, deletes others. This time they’ve also gone around and modified the TOS. As usual, mass panic ensues.
The people who are panicking can be divided roughly into two groups (non exclusive):
- The pirates
- The clueless
This should go without saying, but we don’t want to have anything to do with the former group. Nintendo is obviously going to fight piracy (and that’s going to hurt homebrew). We’ll have to deal with the homebrew part, but don’t expect that to help piracy in any way. It may, or it may not. And if it doesn’t, pirates will have to deal with fighting nintendo themselves.
The usual messages about WADs, “backups”, and all that crap are going straight to /dev/null, and we’re seeing... More »
Movie pirates are distributing fake Blu-ray movie titles in China, which are essentially ordinary DVDs passed off as Blu-rays.
According to a WSJ report, the counterfeit Blu-ray discs are ordinary DVDs that hold the same movie content as the original Blu-ray but it is encoded in the AVCHD format. AVCHD is based on the MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) video format, enabling recording of high-definition 1080i and 720p video onto cheap DVD discs.
"We are concerned and are assigning priority to this issue," said Mike Ellis, the Asia-Pacific managing director for the MPA.
The issue came into the surface last month when authorities raided a big stash of the new pirated discs in China, which is often at the leading edge of piracy trends.
The MPA estimates that within the next six months the high-definition discs could account for 10% of $224 million that its m... More »
Having not ever been an owner of a PS3 or PSP, I wasn’t aware of the bias that retailers are showing towards the PlayStation 3 console.
One of the guys that I work with is a huge PlayStation fan. Not a fanboy, mind you, but a normal person who happens to like the PS3 over the 360.
I’ve heard him talk about it before, but I’ve always passed it off as simple bad customer service or people just being overly hyped about a 360 game over the PlayStation ones, but after “Emergence Day 2″, I was shocked and appalled at the level of anti-PS3 sentiment he had to deal with.
It all started with him telling me that every time he went to his local game store, a small “mom and pop” type store where he has shopped for quite a while, they constantly bugged him to show up to the midnight release of Gears of War 2. On every visit, it seemed, he had to remind the shop owner that he did not have a 360 and had no intention of buying one.
Yesterday we reported news of Microsoft starting a new wave of XBox Live bans on modded XBox 360 consoles.
Today, Microsoft's Major "Larry Hyrb" Nelson has confirmed it stating the following via his blog linked above:
Xbox 360 Console banning: I’ve gotten a few messages and seen some forum threads pop up on console bannings so I thought I’d post and let folks know what’s up.
In our our continued effort to keep gameplay safe and secure for our community of more than 14 million members, Microsoft has taken action against a small percentage of Xbox 360 consoles that have been illegally modified in order to play pirated games.
You should know that modifying your Xbox 360 console is also a violation of the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void your warranty a... More »
I’ve said it time and time again, video game storylines suck. But that doesn’t mean that the character’s in those horrible storylines can’t come up with pearls of wisdom (Or is it just comic gold?) when they open up their mouths.
Below are, in my opinion, the ten greatest phrases to ever come out of a video game character’s mouth. I’m sure I’m missing a few here, but that’s what comment boards are for. So here they are, the top ten phrases ever.
See if you can close your eyes and remember just how they sounded the first time you first heard them. Just don’t do it while you’re driving or operating heavy machinery. You should usually keep your eyes open for stuff like that.
10. “Waka Waka Waka, etc.” —Pac-man
Fauzy from the Muppet Babies, is that you? Nope, it’s just everybody’s favorite yellow one-third-of-a-pizza chomping down on pellets while avoiding ghosts, or Klan members, or whatever, Inky, Blinky... More »
This Christmas, both Sony and Microsoft are placing their bets on a bunch of ugly aliens and a couple of anti-heroes who are almost as ugly.
The massive gaming companies are going head-to-head in the build-up to the crucial holiday sales season with two much anticipated and very similar titles, Resistance 2 and Gears of War 2.
The games, both sequels, are first-person shooters, in which the player assumes the role of the man behind the big gun and the main antagonists are sharp-toothed aliens. Both games were released this week.
In Resistance 2, the invading creatures are called the Chimera, horrific beings that have the ability to turn mankind into disfigured slaves. In Gears of War 2, the focus shifts to stopping the evil Locust Horde, a subterranean race trying to exterminate the human race. In both titles, it's up to the dysfunctional hero to save the day.
But a far bigger battle is going on behind the scenes, where executives be... More »
I don't know about anyone else, but I've been holding onto two copies of Persona 3 for quite some time now. The original came in this nice box with an art book, and then FES came out and I just couldn't bring myself to give up to original. So there you go.
Will the same thing happen? Atlus says no.
"We are today able to announce that at no point in the future will we announce the release of a "FES" version of Persona 4," said Tim Pivnicny, Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "The very finest, most definitive version of Persona 4 will be the one released on December 9, 2008."
Now if only we could convince them to quit letting places like amazon release awesome pre-order junk, I will be extremely happy. I want my tele-teddy darn it!
Press Release: Atlus Announces That There Will Only Be One (Very Awesome) Version of Persona 4
Unprecedented announcement-of-no-announcement shocks industry
Nintendo has confirmed to MCV (linked above) today that flash cards such as the R4 will not with the Nintendo DSi.
This news does not come as a shock to most, and was suspected by many Nintendo DSi owners who reported on it last week.
To quote: Nintendo has confirmed to MCV that today's reports claiming that SD-card based piracy hardware the R4 will not work with the upcoming DSi are correct.
The platform holder was not able to confirm whether this is a deliberate feature of the newly redesigned handheld. However, judging by recent history it’s not unreasonable to presume this is the case.
(0) 
