272w ago - It all started innocently enough, in the gaming forum section of a non-gaming related website I visit. The fanboys were going at it, spitting venom and vitriol back and forth as they tried to declare their favorite console as being the best choice for everyone.

Someone said that the PS3 simply had "more power" (and that is a direct quote). Others maintained that the PS3 had literally no good games that the 360 didn't (and I guess for some reason this meant that they thought it never would).

That's when someone chimed in with the argument that the PS3 is a better buy because it supports 1080p output via HDMI, without having to buy an "Elite" version. Of course, that's forgetting that the XBOX 360 in all its flavours comes with HDMI output now - including the "Retard" or "Arcade" version.

The point is that the current generation of games are not really full HD anyway. Most of them, at least.

Halo 3 Controversy
As I was doing research for this article, I came across this massive thread at Beyond3D. This is the thread that generated a lot of buzz on the net, and heat with Bungie, because they exposed the fact that Halo 3 played at a native resolution of 640p (that's 1152Ã--640 - or 0.7 megapixels, less pixel area than that of the "old" gaming standard...

273w ago - It's not easy for a company to make an open-world game that stands totally separate form the titan that is Grand Theft Auto. THQ went the opposite direction of other companies and decided to make their first entry into the free-roaming gangster genre what was essentially a re-skinned GTA.

Luckily for the publisher no one had seen GTA on next-gen systems so Saints Row was their only option for a high-def world of free-roaming destruction. Now it's the year 2008, gamers everywhere are gearing up for Grand Theft Auto IV and yet the people at THQ don't seem worried.

In fact, they seem downright confident that Saints Row 2 will be able to woo gamers away from Rockstar's latest. Just last week we got a look at a very early build and while we weren't allowed to delve deep into what the city of Stillwater holds this time around, we can say that the building blocks are once again in place for a rousing open-world thugfest.

As those who played through the first Saints Row know by now, your nameless character was taken out at the end of the storyline thanks to a well-timed boat bomb (like a car bomb, but on a boat). Somehow your kingpin survived the explosion, but not without serious cosmetic damage.

Thus the fact that you begin the new storyline by reshaping your character's physique at...

273w ago - When the first announcements of Activision's Guitar Hero: Aerosmith (Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii) came out, quite a number of people posted comments that the idea of just having one band doesn't quite appeal to them.

Well, it might be good to know that a Best Buy advertisement revealed that the game will also contain songs from Aerosmith's favorite bands.

Further lending credibility to this new tidbit of information, is an article published on the USA Today which stated that the game will contain "some opening acts" and "some special guests." Could we be seeing Run DMC (Walk this Way FTW!) in this upcoming title? We can only hope.

While the addition of other bands in the game looks to be almost certain, we can't say for sure until Activision gives an official announcement regarding this. Still, the odds are pretty good that we'll be seeing other bands aside from Aerosmith in this upcoming video game.

273w ago - Buried in its restructuring statement was this bit of data from Sci/Eidos: Kane and Lynch sold 1.4 million units.

That's a solid, though far from spectacular, worldwide performance for a game that got very mixed reviews (though I personally thought it was great).

However Sci said it could have done much better. "We believe it could have sold more had we optimised the opportunity," it said in a statement.

Given Sci/Eidos' size, of course, it can only "optimize the opportunity" so far. Which was exactly one of EA CEO John Riccitiello's arguments last week as he explained why Take-Two would do better as part of his company."I wouldn't change a line of code in 'Bioshock,' and the same goes for 'GTA' and 'Max Payne,' " he said.

"What we would do is sell more of them. Given our scale, we have substantial operations in places we don't believe they have ever visited. ... That allows us to sell more software and do so more efficiently."

273w ago - "N+," the game that produced Multiplayer's first Enemy of the Week, was always intended to let players upload custom levels for anyone to download, but Microsoft nixed the feature at the last second.

The decision was so last second, in fact, the version of "N+" available on Partnernet, a test version of Xbox Live that publishers and select media can access, actually includes this feature. We wondered why a small studio like Metanet Software would bother investing in such an ambitious feature if they had any suspicions it wouldn't make the cut.

They told us that up until a few months ago, they had every belief it would. We asked Microsoft to explain the late change, and they released this statement over email:

"We do not discuss our contracts with partners. Game development is a complex business; however, we work closely with developers and publishing partners on solutions for any development issues. Microsoft is committed to bringing the best games to Xbox 360."

The games developers, however, were willing to provide some details. "We were devastated to learn we couldn't include that functionality," said Metanet co-founder (and, thus, co-creator of the original "N") Mare Sheppard to us over e-mail. "It's a huge disappointment, and we had to settle for...