From 1up.com,
Gamers have to get good at mapping things in their heads, remembering landmarks, and just generally orienting themselves. It’s more than I gained from Boy Scouts, anyway, which mostly taught me how to get bored making a bird feeder before getting kicked out for not having proper respect for power tools.
I recently found a cool blog called GamePolitics.com. They have several good posts on the recent ICE raids of console modders. I will also add this site to our resources section.
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was recently involved in a bunch of raids on the makers of mod-chips instead of cracking down on illegal immigrants and preventing possible terrorists from staying inside the country. Mod-chips are used to enhance the functionality of consoles such as the XBOX and Playstation. The government has the citizens’ best interests in hand, honestly.
Update:
A victim of the raids has come forward to give his personal account.
Jack Thompson Blames Bill Gates for VT Shooting
“…the worst school massacre in world history was at the hands of Robert Steinhaeuser, who literally trained on the Microsoft on-line, hyper-violent shooter game, Counterstrike… As you know, I similalry [sic] went on NBC’s Today Show with the DC Beltway Sniper still unidentified and at-large a few years ago and told Matt Lauer and the nation that the triggerman would most likely be a teen video gamer trained on a sniper video game. The tarot card was a clue, but there were other clues. I was right, as Malvo trained on your Microsoft game, Halo.”
Just for reference, according to Bungie.net, in the last 24 hours over 500,000 unique players played Halo 2 online. According to Wikipedia, 9.2 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide. Also, according to Valve, at any one time there are approximately 150,000 people playing some form of Counterstrike. How can one honestly believe that these games lead individuals to violent behavior when it is so obviously a horrible fringe minority? On top of that, if you can show me an average young male in the United States who has never played any sort of violent video game, I’d be absolutely dumbstruck.
[Update] It has come to my attention that the version of Counterstrike that Cho was playing was not even published by Microsoft. Counterstrike for the PC was published by Sierra Studios. Though, Sierra doesn’t have enough money to be the victim of Thompson’s lunatic lawsuit frenzy.
There is a great post on the Technology Liberation Front blog about when to let kids start playing video games. The poster, Mr. Thierer, is himself a gamer and discusses his thought process on when and how he will let his kids enter the gaming arena. Personally, I think a gamer knows when it is the right time to introduce their kid to gaming.
There is a new Battlestar Galactica game demo that runs on Macs, Windows and Linux.
Demo
There is a new product out for the XBOX 360 that has two extra fans to cool the console, as well as converting the proprietary input to work with most standard A/V cables and includes a 4-port USB hub. What more could a gamer ask for….and it is only $30. IGN has a first look at the new add-on.
When I first played the demo for Lost Planet, I had high hopes for the game and the graphics looked amazing. Sadly, Ars Technica’s review of the game points out some major flaws, while referencing one of my favorite movies; Starship Troopers.
From:MacWorld
Violent video games could be outlawed across the European Union, following calls for a clampdown among E.U. justice ministers this week.
Germany, which took over the six month rotating presidency of the Union at the beginning of this month, is leading the initiative but the European Commission has also been pushing for more control of video game violence.
Today, teamxbox.com annnounced that Microsoft is about to implement a new feature for the XBOX 360. This feature will allow XBOX Live users to permanantly download TV show episodes and essentially rent HD movies over the XBOX Live service. The media will download straight to the XBOX 360 hard drive. For more info, visit xbox.com.
From: Crave
“While the general public has taken kindly to the Xbox 360‘s dashboard, nothing inspires change more than last-minute panic. Perhaps sensing big things on the way from the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft has an pretty hefty UI update (85 new features) ready to deploy tomorrow morning.
The biggest new feature on the way is the addition of the ability to output 1080p”
The Entertainment Consumers Association is a new political action group designed to give gamers a voice in this new climate of video game legislation. Avid gamers everywhere should be jumping to join this organization where all thier voices can be gathered into one loud voice. Movie ratings are not governed by legislation and neither should video game ratings.
From: Dallas Morning News
“For about a decade, Ensemble has been making some of the best-selling battlefield simulation games for the PC. But its next big game will be built solely for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console, rather than the PC.”
Surprise! Halo Wars is an RTS that is being developed by Ensemble Studios for the XBOX 360. This RTS will be based on the Halo universe that so many of us know and love. I can’t wait for the release of this game.
Ensemble Studios, the makers of Age of Empires, will be announcing something big tomorrow the 27th. We at Phyrfight love the series, and are waiting with anxious ears as to what the surprise will be. Stay tuned.
Sony recently announced that it would not be releasing the upcoming Playstaion 3 console simultaneously in Japan, North America and Europe as was previously promised. The console will be released late in Europe currently posted as March 2007.
The reason: Blu-ray isn’t ready.
This comes after Sony postponed the launch for 6 months in May 2006. Why did they postpone such a highly anticipated product?
Blu-ray wasn’t ready.
So my question to Sony is this: Why are you so caught up in being absolutely certain that Blu-ray is the default format for your next generation gaming machine?
The answer is that the disc format belongs to Sony, and rather than let the market decided which format is better, Sony would prefer to beat HD-DVD by forcing the production and use of Blu-ray taking advantage of its already-installed base of Playstation gamers. The problem here is that Sony has made one enormously gross assumption. Sony believes that no matter what they do, their console will far outsell either of its competitors and create and overwhelming demand for Bly-ray discs.
However, the fact that Microsoft has had a console of almost identical gaming power on the market for a year and the fact the Nintendo will be launching an innovative and cheap console slightly before the Sony launch will prove to be a much more considerable challange than they realize.
More as it develops.
A short film by Neill Blomkamp, the announced director of the Halo movie.
Nyko Releases New Xbox 360 and PSP Accessories
New accessories help to cool the Xbox 360 and make it easier to hold the PSP.
Over at ArsTechnica there is an article that suggests Sony will not be able to ship the PS3 to North America until 2007 and that if the PS3 is going to cost the same as the 360, Sony will be taking a huge hit.