Games! Games! Games!

My nephew's understanding of this war has been dictated by action movies and video games that are often larger than life, as evidenced by his questions. "Grandpa, were you ever ambushed? Did you shoot many guys? Did you blow anybody up?" The answers he received did not satisfy his views of the glories of war.

Our thumbs and backs hurt like crazy. We know the reason. We just sat on our asses for 14 hours and played video games. Of course they hurt. We gingerly nurse our wounds over the next couple of days. We play trace amounts of GBA like an accident victim learning to walk again.

The three developers of the Cell processor are preparing to release full chip specifications and software libraries in an effort to rally the open-source community around the device that powers the Sony Playstation 3. With the outlook for the multicore chip's use beyond Sony's internal systems cloudy at best, the partners are hoping to spark its uptake in applications ranging from HDTVs to supercomputers.

Listening to the call, i still have some questions and comments. Overall, i think shanda is a very successful company that is going to be challenged to grow its revenues and metrics at a rate necessary to justify its current valuation. Call me crazy, or worse, but I think the market will correct its view of Shanda's valuation. Here are some of those questions/comments:

It is worth noting that despite Mikami's comments in the past, Capcom has decided to port this title to the PS2. The game will feature some new cutscenes and extras. However, it also will not be released until the end of 2005 and likely will not look quite as impressive. Personally, I think it's worth it to forget waiting, grab your GameCube and play it right now.

Finally a XBox RPG that won’t disappoint - check out Fable and see how your in-game actions cause you to become good or evil. I don’t see any upcoming xbox games that can beat this great xbox game.

Via defense review, another use of video-game controllers for military purposes (see for the ps2 pad that controls missiles): a remote-controlled throwable robot for which the controller was copped from a PlayStation 2 gamepad (according to popsci).

Quoted from article: Have you ever wondered why Nintendo Power doesn’t include demo discs for subscribers? The people at the magazine would love to do it, but NCL won’t let them. Would you believe that all third-party games must be tested at both NOA and NCL, even for a U.S.-only release? This drawn-out process may be part of the reason that the GameCube version of multiplatform games is usually last to be developed and last to be released.

Over the past year, I’ve heard about people making money in Online games. Basically, they would utilize real world skills like trend spotting, design, and actual gameplay to amass things of value within online games.

Now, I read an article that actually confirms what I’ve heard… people making as much as $100K per year playing in the MMO RPG (massively multiplayer online - Role Playing Game)

It is always really cool to see video games consoles past and present to compare the technology but this article takes a slightly diffrent approach. Wonder why sholder bottons came to be? Why the X-Box controller is so freaking HUGE?

Microsoft's J Allard was asked his opinions on the Playstation 3 hardware. His response was quite contrary to reports heard from other Microsoft employees:

Q: What do you think about Sony’s hardware?

A: In the end, it’s basically a wash. I look at it and say it’s a wash. You can make the case for us, you can make the case for them. We’ll publish a bunch of details so you guys can all speculate but it’s basically a wash.

Interesting, so with all the advantages outlined here, in reality it's only a wash? One might interpret this to mean Mr. Allard is downplaying it to a wash, when in fact all signs point to Sony having the strong upper hand in the hardware department.

The new tiny Game Boy Micro that Nintendo announced at E3 2005 might come bundled with Play-Yan mp3 and mp4 extension.

Seems everyone was hoping that the Xbox 360 was running some sort of Linux variant as the Apple crowd is ready to claim victory in that a lot of game development was done on a G5. Well you can settle down it's not Linux.. [www.windowsfordevices.com]

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that the Nintendo Revolution is the one I have my eye on. I was going to write an article on each console giving my first impressions of their designs, but decided it wasn’t really justified; all three are much of a muchness, frankly. The Xbox 360, though a clear improvement on the design disgrace of its predecessor is still aiming itself squarely at the hardcore online gamer and has a launch title list comprised mostly of sequels and other assorted tedium. The Playstation 3 appears to be another...

Microsoft is way down there at a meager 23%, while Nintendo continues their steady decline at 12%. What's clear is that more gamers want the PS3 than the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Revolution combined.

A Vice President of Microsoft told TheStreet.com that the Xbox 360 should retail for around $300, although a final decision has not been made (one should be made in two months). Microsoft is expected to take a hit on the Xbox 360 and then recoup the money from software sales.

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Two Hollywood unions, SAG and AFTRA, are looking towards a possible strike against video game manufacturers. While most of the members are hardly household names, video games have increasingly been using mainstream talent to provide recognizable voiceovers in their storylines. And big-money video games are all the rage, responsible for wooing people away from the failing box office and unimpressive television line-ups. The problem is that Hollywood expects what Hollywood provides: costly contracts that include residual profit sharing. In essense,...

I am playing a playstation 2 game called "Project Eden." Believe it or not, there are adult women who enjoy video games. I believe this game is considered a survior horror game. I control a team of four people who are a part of a city in the future. There are different levels of the city that are basically built on top of each other. The top of the city is where most of the people live. The lower levels consist of factories, the homeless and gangs. My team has to investigate the violence in a meat factory where some technicians...

Given this level of interest, PSP is in a good position to challenge the other devices in the portable gaming domain, especially devices from Nintendo, the current market leader. Gameboy Advanced and Gameboy DS, both from Nintendo, scored only a combined 33% among U.S. Internet users with purchase plans for a portable gaming device. Nokia N-Gage lags far behind with only 4% of future planned purchases.

Online ‘emulation’ is a new area now being explored. The idea is that you simply play the game in your browser through a Java applet or Flash application. These might not always strictly be emulated programs but many remakes are feature perfect with the originals. The graphics, sounds, and game play remain intact. One excellent place to look for online games is Every Video Game (http://www.everyvideogame.com). While the site does not in fact contain ‘every video game’ it does have a very large list of old games from the arcades, GameBoy,...

Microsoft finally sheepishly admitted—after months and months of hedging—that the XBOX 360 will be somewhat backwards compatible. This is undoubtedly to counter today’s announcements that not only will the PS3 be fully backwards compatible (which everyone expected) with PS1 and PS2 titles, the Nintendo Revolution will be as well. Nintendo’s backwards compatibility kicks the asses of all the competitors. Not only will the Revolution play the last generation of Nintendo Console games, it will playall the generations: the...

So I did compare the xbox360 and they do look pretty even, although I think the ps3 is a little better because blu ray can hold like 40 or 50 gigs or something like that. And has just about every type or wireless controller support you can think of, including 7 bluetooth. Going to have support for different memory cards including compact flash (are they finally realizing people don’t want to use their proprietary memory sticks? (although there’s slots for those, too)) and a removable 2.5″ hard drive (size wasn’t specified,...

The Xbox 360 may be able to recreate the laws of physics, but it can’t change the laws of logic: dedicated gaming machines aren’t likely to be purchased by consumers who don’t have a serious interest in games. There’s even an argument that the next generation of consoles may provide slower growth than in the past. After all, at least the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 need scarce high-definition TVs to demonstrate their full superiority over their predecessors, and rumored higher console and game price titles may delay mass market...

We returned from Chicago late last night so I'm just getting around to posting. On Friday we went to see the Game On exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. It was fanfriggintastic!! The exhibit was pretty damned comprehensive. There was most everything from what is believed to be the first "console" that played pong like games (1968) to the Sony PSP (2005) and the greatest part?? It was interactive. There were old arcade games and consoles ripe for the picking. Unfortunately, the handheld games were off limits (so the NEo Geo pocket...

This richly bitchy summary of the highs and lows of E3 is an excellent piece of cutting-to-the-quick. Although, I don't quite get why Okami can already be considered so great, I think for the most part he's really getting the main points, particularly on his Worst Of list.

The next generation of consoles excites me, and I plan on owning all of them. Sony and Microsoft's entries are both vying to be your all-in-one entertainment centre are cool, but I'm just as excited (if not more) by Nintendo's completely different approach. Access to their entire game backlog from N64 and earlier? Most excellent. There are so many N64 games I desperately want to play, yet never had the opportunity to do so. I can see myself spending many hours playing, of all things, Pokemon Stadium.

Console specifications are a lot like statistics in that you can really change perceptions by paying special attention in selecting what you measure and how you go about measuring it. Microsoft may have been the first manufacturer to announce its next-generation console, but in order to gain that advantage Microsoft also had to reveal its console specs first--giving a fat target-list for Sony's marketing team. Do you really think that Sony would have even mentioned the 51-billion-dot-product-operations per second number during the PS3 press conference...

Would you like to view RSS feeds on your PSP? You might want to check out MioMediaBox for PSP v1.11.

Finally, the Playstation 3 will support outputting to dual screens, either as a way of providing panoramic output, or of displaying additional information. Now, while the photo makes it look quite useful, remember that the PC has supported muyltiple outputs for years, and no game developers (or users) have really taken advantage of that.

This also means that it will be mandatory to purchase new, recompiled versions of Xbox 1 titles in order for them to run on an Xbox 360, which is indeed a disappointment. And infact, Sony and Nintendo themselves have already confirmed that their next-generation gaming consoles (PlayStation 3 and The Revolution) will be perfectly backwards compatible with their older PlayStation 2 and GameCube titles. It's unfortunate to be true for both Microsoft fans and Microsoft themself, only time will tell.

But on the bright side, Nintendo has raised the bar and came up with something nice to look at and clever too. Nintendo announcing the new console called the Nintendo Revolution, so the question is, what happen to the Gamecube? I don't mind the minimalised style of the console, just a nice slick shiny box with blue led glow on the CD rom slot. If is not because they have very limited games available, it definitely will be on my wish list. I don't mind those cutie cuties games from Nintendo, but I just wish they can break the boundaries bit more and away from the old cliched Mario Bros and Zelda. If the Nintendo Revolution doesn't awe you enough, well check out this new little Gameboy Micro by Nintendo too! It's only 0.4inch thick and around 2 inch wide. Well is cute, is pocketsize, but I doubt is playable for the big-thumbers, might end up with Arthritis.

namco are smart and have announced that in addition to a katamari sequel, they are also reworking the original for mobile devices. nokia, despite their expertise in mobile phones, don't get casual / mobile gaming at all. in fact, they might be worse than microsoft. they're equally ignorant of it, but it's more critical to the success of their platform. nokia announced all the new n-gage titles yesterday and there was barely a casual one among the lot. the only casual title is a card full of re-issued classic arcade games. how weak is that? the second...

He's also recommending that more public libraries circulate video games, which I agree is a great idea to help make us more relevant to teens and tweens (and those of us adults who still play games like crazy). I feel like the argument against circulating video games is like the argument against circulating entertainment videos & DVDs--dated and unsupportable. But, that's just my opinion. If anyone knows of a good reason not to circulate video games, please do let me know. I'd be curious to hear it.

The cat’s officially out of the bag, so now I can finally talk about Human Head Studios’ top-secret video game: Prey. For those of you who have been playing PC games forever, you might remember that 3DRealms, the makers of Duke Nukem, promised to come out with one particular game before Duke Nukem Forever. That game was Prey.

• I want to thank Arush, ValuSoft THQ, SCS Software for all their support and help in making The Hunting Unlimited Series PC games the best hunting game by far on the market. Hopefully, there is a HU4 in the works for release in the near future.

I was reading my latest issue of Gamesmaster and came across an article on the next generation of games consoles - the PS3, Nintendo Revolution and Xbox 2. I have to say that what I read wasn't all good, it seems that in their desire to make better consoles with more features Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft may well damage the games industry itself.

Treat as rumour, but the latest leak from Microsoft's camp appears to be the specifications for both the Xbox 2 and its associated, revamped Live service. And it makes for interesting reading...

Two varieties of Xbox Live are proposed, Gold and Silver, with Gold requiring a subscription.

A lot of talk over the new upcoming gaming consoles had been coming across the media and internet over the past several months. I have seen a lot of rumors and some places have even shown fake pictures of what they will look like. None of them have been even close to what the official released pictures look like. They are both white, but playstation has three different colors already to choose from. I am intrested more in the Xbox than the Playstation mainly cause the Playstation controller looks really fucked up. I also have an Xbox now with...

Minutes ago, it was officially announced, that XBOX360 will be compatible with top Xbox games... more to come later.. ;)

My thoughts? They are using the tech they bought from Connectix, and utilizing a virtual machine to play Xbox games.....

A movie and screenshots of the upcoming Formula 1 game for the PlayStation 3 — looks absolutely fantastic!

Fully backward compatible with all Playstation and Playstation 2

Since I am a brand loyalist, and Sony has always treated me right, the PS3 will be sitting on my stand the day it comes out (let’s hope). It has been said that all the PS3 games will be in High Definition which makes me wonder how the hell video games are possibly going to get any better. Here’s only a glimpse into the capability of the PS#:

I may be asking too much of my machinery. Video games are about fun and community. Not sitting your bare ass down on the sterile paper at the doctor’s office. Will the next generation come with a hand sanitizer dispensers in them? Maybe it’ll just excrete from pores in the controller. I don’t want to live in a world where my video game playing isn’t 99.9% germ free.

Let me start off by saying I am not a big Madden fan. I believe the best football game is NCAA Football. Madden, however, is played by everyone I know and my college players from NCAA can be imported into Madden to continue their stellar careers on the pro level. Although Madden itself has many flaws, playing against human players with your favorite team is one of the best experiences I have playing video games. Beating someone with the Niners is always a great experience and next year our team will be much better. I will now explain to you the new features of Madden, that we know, and their impact, as well as rate some of rookie players based on last year’s draft class’ rating.

We know that video games can help us learn, but what exactly is it about the games that does it? Is it that fact that we’re in control — for example, the way drivers in a car seem to learn the roads better than passengers? Or is it something else? Paul Wilson of the University of Leicester and Patrick Péruch of Université de la Méditerranée had been working on this problem separately for several years, with mixed results. In 2002 they combined their efforts to try to figure out what matters most for learning in a virtual environment ("The Influence of Interactivity and Attention on Spatial Learning in a Desk-Top Virtual Environment," Current Psychology of Cognition, 2002).

An Israeli-company is first to market with a new system that allows for the introduction of rich media advertising into on-line video games - a prospective $750 million market by 2006 according to Jupiter Research.

Game boxes like the Xbox and Sony PlayStation exist only because the hardware cost of upgrading a PC to the same media level would be prohibitive.

WOW..... Ik moet zeggen dat het design van de Sony Playstation 3 beter is als de Xbox 360.

With all the details released for the next-generatio Xbox you’d think they’ve finally decided on the issue of backward compatibility with current Xbox games, but no matter how you look for the dirt on that you won’t find it anywhere on the spec sheet or product details. So what’s the deal with it? Well according to this article even Microsoft doesn’t know for sure.