As many VGC forum-goers have been discussing with great exposition lately, there are many of us who feel as if the reviewing segment of our hobby has gone completely awry over the past few years. In my ever-so humble opinion, when it comes right down to it, I question whether it was any good from the outset.
Many of us grew up with gaming but unfortunately, in many ways, gaming hasn’t grown up with us. We’re still the purchasers of hackneyed trash and in most cases, we do it with a smile. I had an opening rant prepared on the review system for this editorial but after lengthy consideration, I will defer to Rob Reiner and his mockumentary classic, This is Spinal Tap.
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one... More »
Sony has confirmed that Media Molecule’s ambitious world creation platformer LittleBigPlanet will hit Japanese store shelves on October 30, exclusively on PlayStation 3.
A firm launch date for other territories has yet to be officially announced, aside from a vague fall release window.
However, considering that the developer is European based, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect a release in both Europe and the U.S. around the same date.
To quote, roughly translated from French: "Announced for October in Europe and the USA, but without specific day, LittleBigPlanet has reached its official date for Japan: October 30, 2008, priced at 5,980 yen (36 €)."
GN has been following the Xbox 360's various hardware alterations for quite a while now, and it's been a pretty interesting story so far. From the original, RRoD prone Xenon mobo to the Zephyr and Falcon successors as well as the upcoming Jasper design, there's been no shortage of news in the field. Today, as a matter of fact, we've got a look at another Xbox 360 chipset, the extremely rare "Opus" as discovered by member Electric Tunder on the Xbox-Underground forums.
Designed specifically to help Microsoft recoup losses on RRoD'd hardware that's been returned for repairs, the Opus chipset is a Falcon-generation mobo that'll snap into original Xenon Xbox 360s. Because it is installed in refurbished Xbox 360 launch chasses, the Opus lacks HDMI-out. It does, however, feature the Falcon-era HANA video chip that supports digital output, which means a really skilled modder could potentially retrofit such a connection.
The Opus also looks to be sporting the 65-nm ... More »
Marcan writes: While Nintendo did reply to bushing’s open letter, he has not succeeded in establishing a conversation with an engineer about the issue. Furthermore, we have learned that they received and read at least two of the original three e-mails that were sent prior to the open letter, and decided not to reply (in fact, one of their replies was to one of the original e-mails, but only after the open letter was posted). Therefore, we can only conclude that they are not very interested in the issue.
As many of you may already know or have deduced, the bug in our open letter referred to a way of reading DVD-Rs (and Video DVDs) without the use of a modchip. Several people have investigated the bug independently, and they’ve gotten pretty close. However, we did discover an easier way of enabling this mode from homebrew, which, among other things, does not require any changes to IOS at all. This method is also relatively difficult to transform into some sort of ... More »
Today you will hear about what Final Fantasy 13 will and won't do for the Xbox 360. So sit back, grab a beer or your respective drink, and get ready to read!
4. Final Fantasy WON'T be the saving grace in Japan for the Xbox 360
Final Fantasy does not need to be released in Japan for the sole reason that Xbox 360 in Japan is pretty much the equivalent of finding a VII gaming system in America. In Japan, they don’t want much to do with the Xbox 360. They support their countries products and have no need for a American console with more shoot’em ups that you can shake a stick at. Just take a look at July’s numbers of in Japan.
1. PSP- 56,998
2. Nintendo DS- 48,540
3. Wii- 41,798
4. PS3- 12,458
5. PS2- 10,405
6. Xbox 360- 3,807
If I were in charge of Microsoft, I would have stopped trying to beat that dead horse many days ago.
WildTangent Chief Executive Alex St. John never fails to amuse, entertain and stir the pot. And that was certainly the case during his 45 minute talk at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle today.
St. John, who has built WildTangent into the one of the bigger online gaming networks over the past 10 years, made the bold prediction that video game consoles will be "extinct" by 2020.
He started his talk with an image of Moses on the screen and this rapid-fire comment:
I am going to make some outrageous claims today. And then I will attempt to substantiate them. Feel free to disagree with me. Just remember, that I am right.
St. John called the console business an "extremely fragile business" which has been subject to major collapses over the years:
We are looking at the last generation of consoles right now. I am going to predict to you that the PS3, the Wii and the X-box are the last generation of consoles t... More »
To begin this week's PS3 Dev briefing, we want to give a follow-up in regards to the PS3 Downgrade PUP's for PS3 TEST/Debug consoles we recently acquired.
Yes, it does work fine, and we have successfully downgraded a PS3 Test to version 1.00! Version 1.00 is quite neutered for a TEST, about the only thing that works is the ability to run code from a DVD/BD, aside from that just about everything is non-functional.
More to come in those regards, including our ability to install and dump Retail PKG's on a Debug PS3 console!
Now onto the rumors: As we all know, many have been trying (but failing terribly) to dump the EEPROM chip inside the PS3's controller.
Our very own talented Courier successfully removed and dumped the chip, a picture o... More »
Industry giant and evil overlord Electronic Arts reported this morning that it had finished its wheeling and dealing with the Federal Trade Commission concerning the takeover of Take Two Interactive.
In its regulatory filing, EA said it would not go through with the previously offered $2 billion deal (because Take Two rejected it), and would instead return to the table, presumably with hired goons, no sooner than August 21 of this year. The news apparently convinced some people that this deal will happen, as stock prices rose for both companies. We have just experienced the beginning of the end.
The average gamer knows this to be true. It was a sad day when EA acquired BioWare, and that’s just one developer. Take Two represents one of the four legs (along with EA, Ubisoft, and ActiBlizzion) that holds up the bed of videogames that we all sleep in. Combining two of those legs into one will certainly make the bed unstable, and we will most likely not have... More »
Xabora posted up some rumors regarding potential upcoming Xbox stuff at NeoGAF linked above. The Xbox 360 will be slimming down to a Wii-like size, this model should have a GPU and CPU combo dye with E-DRAM off to the side.
Next up is the model after the 360 that is expected to have a Blu-ay drive, quad core CPU, 1TB hard drive and a sepculative release date of 2010.
To quote: Today I ran across some information. However I do live in an area with a good deal of employees/contractors from a rather large corporation and have worked with some of them in my past. So lets start off with some of the info I was given starting with the 360 in general.
From what I was told during a conversation; Microsoft seems to be slimming the system down to a 'Wii-like' size. (A Fat overweight Wii) This model should have the CPU+GPU Combo Dye with the E-DRAM off to the side. Thats all the information I have on that.
We have had quite a few requests as to how the BD-Emulator on a PS3 TEST console works, and thought the best way to show how it works is through a video!
After formatting a USB HDD (in this case, a 500GB EIDE Drive hooked to the PS3 via an old USB CDROM enclosure) in the PS3, it is transferred to a PC. Once transferred, a properly decrypted, patched and remastered retail game is written to the drive. The drive is then plugged back in via USB to the PS3 TEST, while off.
The Drive is then turned on, followed by the PS3. Once the PS3 is on the BD-Emulator is set to USB. DEV is for a PS3 TOOL, which has an additional internal HDD for BD-Emulator purposes, and BD Drive is self explanatory. The PS3 then gets rebooted.
Upon reboot is where the video starts, it first shows the previous settings in the PS3, and then the game that was remastered, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men is started from BD-Emulator. The BD-Emulator ... More »
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