Xbox Live vs PSN

Aaron Greenberg, group manager of Xbox Live gives his insights into what makes Xbox Live so much different and so much better than the PSN during an interivew on 'Bonus Round'. User genereted content or lack thereof (fake E3 2006 promises anyone?) is also discussed as well as future developments for XNA that gives people the ability to create games without writing a single line of code.

During an interview Aaron Greenberg mentioned the three best things that Sony was doing with the PSN were,

1. Actually doing it.
2. Their store is good, not better than Xbox Live MarketPlace, just 'different'.
3. Original Playstation 1 games

Interesting he didn't mention anywhere that it was free, this was to him, Aaron replied it's 'not important' and that he didn't think it was 'free vs paid' because of Xbox Live silver users being very active on the network.

When pushed hard about the price for multiplayer Aaron said that the consumer satisfaction rate was high and most people thought it was great value. Looks like Xbox Live owners are just too happy to pay the $50 a year. He also went on to imply that Xbox Live multiplayer provides a more consistant feel throughout all games through a universal friends list and voice support in all games, unlike the PSN.

On the point of 'Games for Windows' Aaron says that they're trying to bring Xbox Live to the PC and that all developer resentment that may be aimed towards 'Games for Windows' is because of the standards being set to qualify such as fast loading and quick installs.

User genereted content is 'getting there', Aaron says that integrating Torque-X into XNA makes it very easy to create games and made a promise that as someone who has 'never written a line of code' that he was going to make a game on XNA.

Furthermore he adds that it is 'definitely possible' to have a scenario where a person makes a map for Halo 3 on the PC, submits it for consideration and if it is approved is ptu online to be shared.

John Carmack Shows off New Game Engine - At An Apple Conference!

John Carmack has unveiled a new game (dubbed 'Tech 5') engine and glimpses of a new IP that ID has been working on for the last few years. Whats surprising is that this game will be shown on a PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and Mac at E3.

Though that isn't all, clearly Mr. Carmack wants to impress Mac owners making it clear that there is yet another (exclusive?) Mac related announcement thats going to be made at E3.

Sign of changing times?


Video:



Screenshots:

VIA Engadget

Nintendo Big Wigs to Jump Ship?

It seems like there is a very real chance some of Nintendos most valuable employees, including George Harrison (Edit: The other George Harrison), are set to leave Nintendo following a decision by Nintendos higher-higher ups to relocate the PR department from Redmond to New York.

So far Nintendo has not commented on the situation, though if they have any brains they know better than to just up and dump what is perhaps the dream team of NOA. Nintendo has never seen such great success since the original NES days, losing their key players could spell an inevitable death within the coming years.

As of present however these are all just rumours, all of it, yes, up to and including the relocation of the PR department.

VIA GameSpot

Gamestops Smart Marketting

Damn them and their sleezy ways.

Star Wars: Forces Unleashed - Behind the Scenes Video

A six minute behind the scenes look at the origins of the ideas and concepts behind 'Forces Unleashed'.

Wii Sports - Coming to a Cinema Near You

Nintendo has found a new way to amaze fans and then suddenly kick them in the gnads so hard the contents of the aforementioned comes spewing out of their noses and ears.

In its latest bid to bring the Wii to the masses Nintendo will start advertising the Wii in UK cinemas. Now this isn't the regular advertising where you're stuck there being forced to watch all these ads as you eat your popcorn impatiently (and always run out by the time the movie starts!).

The concept is simple, it starts with a Wii advertisement on the big screen and then suddenly the lights in the cinema turn on and two 'random' individuals - a boy and his mother are brought onto the stage to try Wii-Sports for the first time ever. Best of all the game is played on the big screen!

As you would expect the 'random' individuals are actually actors, so no, theres no chance you'll get to play on the big cinema screen even if you bring your mother along.


VIA Wii-UK

Digg Has Been Hacked

A user has submitted one story which was made popular, it says the number of submitted stories/videos made popular by this user is four, the user has a popular stories ratio of 400%



http://digg.com/users/window12/profile

Crysis: DirectX 10 VS DirectX 9.0 Video Comparison

At this point in time on our planet earth theres only one game that can truly demonstrate the graphical advantages of DirectX 10 over 9.

Playstation 3 Upscaler: Before and After

While slightly blurrier the upscaled images all look heaps sharper, God of War 2 seems to benefit most.

Thanks Moe

(VIA Digg comment)

Wii Titles Confirmed for 2007 Release, in Japan

Many AAA titles have been confirmed for a 2007 release in Japan, while it isn't clear if some will make it out in North America and Europe this year it is more than likely Metroid Prime: Corruption and Super Mario Strikers will.

The rest of the list is as follows:

• Donkey Kong Taru Jet Race (DK Jet or DK Bongo Blast, US) - June 28, 2007
• Wii Health Pack -- 2007
• Disaster: Day of Crisis - 2007
• Mario Party 8 - 2007
• Project H.A.M.M.E.R. - 2007
• Wii Music - 2007
• Super Mario Galaxy - 2007
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl - 2007
• Battalion Wars II - 2007
• Forever Blue - 2007
• Mario Strikers Charged - 2007
• Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - 2007
• Mario and Sonic at the Olympics - 2007

Looks like Japanese Wii owners are going to have their hands full for a good few months, thats at least enough AAA titles to keep most people going for a year.


VIA IGN

Burnout 5 - 'Burnout Paradise' Officially Announced!

Head over to Criterion games and find this loverly press release, a trailer and a bunch of screenshots have also been released.

Firearms 2 Mod is a No a-Go-Go

I can in part imagine what the Firearms team think and feel, after years of developing a mod it was snatched away from them by a bunch of over zealous 'fans' and now using the Firearms name are making a sequel to a mod they never created but stole.

The same can't be said for the Firearms 2 Team, who kicked off their mod in August 2005 by hijacking the Firearms Forums, FTP, and servers using back-door access supplied by our server provider, ReconGamer. Every single team member and most of the forum admin/mod staff were banned, and we lost all of our art source and personal files stored on the server. As a result, this website was rebuilt from archived sites. The server takeover didn't affect the domain names, so the FA Team still controls those. For a while, they redirected to the site of our follow-up mod, World at War.

Full Story

The developers of the original Firearms mod don't want to remember this gross past, (understandably so) they are moving on and making World at War, a Half-Life 2 mod.

What I don't understand is how the gaming community can allow this sort of behavior and even support it (yes people do support Firearms 2). While Firearms 2 may turn out to be a good mod it was stolen no less, if we took all legalities out of the equation and said that Sony stole Bungie and plans to release a second rate knock off on the Playstation 3 would anyone agree much less support Sony in that move?

Is it different that this is the mod community? Shouldn't it be even more aggravating to the community that such a mod is in fact profiting off the name of another teams entire efforts, even the original creator didn't like the idea of giving Firearms 2 to another team:

During this period, Zerk [creator of Firearms] consulted with the DICE legal team and learned that, despite having signed a contract, no legal action could be taken against the theft of intellectual property online.

I don't see how people can be shallow enough to say 'yes we support this mod because it looks cool' despite it being a complete ripoff of someone else's work, better or not it's stolen and if we continue this line of thought we could see more of this happening - more startup mods having their thunder snatched from them due to such and such glory hogs who think they know better.

Playstation 3 - Medal of Honor, Black Exlcusivity?

EA's boss Gerhard Florin claims despite the inflated price point the Playstation 3 can only be judged fairly in two years and claims like a Sony rep that EA will 'need' CELL for games like 'Black' and 'Medal of Honor'.

He added more online oriented games will be released on the Xbox 360 but gave no word on Medal of Honor or Black being released on it.

Does this mean no 'Black' or 'Medal of Honor' lov'n for the Xbox 360 in two years time? WHile it is far fetched to believe if you allow yourself to believe Sony's hype machine then it may turn into a reality, of course Gerhard is boss of EA which made the mistake of tying itself down to the Playstation 3 and is now playing 'catch up' with the Wii.


VIA Game Industry

Taiko Drum Master Coming to Nintendo DS

It may turn into the Guitar Hero of the portable market, Namco Bandai have announced Taiko Drum Master for the DS and yes it will let you drum to the Super Mario Bros theme.

Controls are still a secret (we still have our imaginations) and Namco still hasn't revealed any screenshots of the lower screen of the game. The game will feature four player multiplayer with drummer personalization features (you can dress up your drummer).



Current song list:

J-Pop:
Natsumatsuri (Summer Festival)
Won't Be Long
Mata Aimashou (Let's Meet Again)
Dance2 Featuring Soy Sauce [Pocky Chocolate Commercial Song]

Children's/Folk Music:
Mori no O-Kumasan (Bears in the Forest)
Inu no O-mawarisan (Dog and the Policeman)

Game Music:
Super Mario Bros.

Classical:
Beethoven's 7th (partial)
William Tell Overture
Heaven and Hell (Offenbach)
Flight of the Bumblebee (Rimsky-Korsakov)
Classic Medley (Wedding Songs)

Namco Originals:
Kimi ni Touch!
Mojipittan Medley
Kagekiyo
Pachi O-Sensei

VIA Wired

More 'New' GTA IV Details

Game Informer has spilled the beans on (some more) of the neat-o features behind GTA IV the coolest of which is the removal of airplanes and the addition of helicopters.

The reason for removing the airplanes is the fact the game will be centered around one city so the gameplay wouldn't suit an airplane though flying is still a 'very large part of the game'.

Drivable boats may also make an appearance (why the hell wouldn't they with that awesome looking water?) as well as girlfriends - no word on an 'unlockable' hot-coffee mini-game.

Graphically the game is already very impressive though Rockstar is still making improvements here, adding bucket loads of spit and polishing away as hard as possible.

Driving is also apparently going to be revamped a bit, probably for the better, Game Informer says it will be far more like 'Midnight Club' in that the camera will be further up close to the car and give more vision to the player of the surroundings.


VIA IGN

AGEIA PhysX Behind 'Red Steel' Physics

No joke, Ageia PhysX is behind the physics in Ubisoft's first Nintendo Wii game 'Red Steel'.


Complete list of titles currently using Ageia PhysX

Auto Assault	Net Devil
Bet on Soldier: Blackout Saigon	Kylotonn Entertainment
Bet on Soldier: Blood of Sahara	Kylotonn Entertainment
Bet on Soldier: Blood Sport (Patch)	Kylotonn Entertainment
CellFactor: Combat Training	Artificial Studios, Immersion
City of Villains	Cryptic Studios
Dark Physics	The Game Creators
Gears Of War	Epic Games
Infernal	Metropolis Software
Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire	BEC
Red Steel	Ubisoft Paris
RoboBlitz	Naked Sky
Stoked Rider: Alaska Alien	Bongfish
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter	GRIN
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (single player mode)	Ubisoft Paris
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas	Ubisoft Montreal
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent (multiplayer mode)

Ubisoft seems to be making the most of it, Unreal Engine 3 will be utilizing it in full and since Ubisofts current game engine seems to be a UE2 with some UE3 elements thrown in we have a sure fire bet that Ubisoft Wii titles, at least in part, will be powered by UE3.

The following game engines are/will be using AGEIA PhysX technology,

Engine Name	Developer
Unreal Engine 3	Epic Games
Gamebryo	Emergent Entertainment
Reality Engine	Artificial Studios
Eclipse Engine	Bioware
Saber3D	Saber Interactive
Vision Engine 6.0	Trinigy

Harry Potter Wii Details

Your wishes have been granted, open ended gameplay and the Wii-mote is, yep, Mr. Potter's wand, with mapped out motions to boot. Of course in keeping with tradition it is a Playstation 2 port with 16:9 and pro scan added as a nice little extra.

Probably the most interesting thing you can do with the wand which also happens to be taken right out of Elebits, you can move objects around in game, chairs, beds, whatever. Though I doubt horny twelve year old boys will be able to pull any skirts up, that will be saved for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions which are rumored to be supporting 'clothes physics' for just that purpose (EA declined to comment on said rumor).

Hogwarts is modeled in its entirety, players are free to roam wherever they want and take on quests in any order the game is permitting however EA is endeavouring on keeping close to the storyline, and yes, there will be a Quiditch minigame.

Dumbledore and Sirius Black are also set to be playable.

New Team Fortress 2 info and Launch Date set-ish

IGN recently got some juicy bits and pieces of info about Team Fortress 2 (TF2) from an interview of several Valve employees.

What is interesting about TF2 is that it seems like Valve is trying to create a very fine tuned and definite experience as opposed to most, if not all, other multiplayer games out there. To that end classes have been and are being revamped significantly, an interesting dynamic of paper scissor rock is being set up where, for instance, pyro kills scout in closed space, scout kills pyro in open space favoring gameplay.

Maps are specific, each is tied to one and only one game mode because variations between them can cause unfavorable gameplay that has not been fine tuned to the minutest of details as Valve really wants to do hence does not go with the rest of TF2's spirit.

Downloadable content has been confirmed, more maps and 'stuff like that' will be on the way after the initial shipment of six maps in TF2. The newer downloadable maps may also contribute to the ongoing storyline behind TF2.

Wait what? Storyline? Thats what Charlie Brown said.

Development is 'technically done' on the Xbox 360 and PC, Electronic Arts UK is working on the Playstation 3 port, networking is still being implemented but "[pause] it's rending and running the games and whatnot". Both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions will be ports of the PC, just to clarify, there is no simultaneous Xbox 360/PC development, everything goes on the PC first, the consoles second.

For those of you fearing that EA will call the shots here hence ruin TF2 you can put your minds at ease, Robin Walker of Valve says clearly that "EA is our retail distributor, they're not our publisher, they don't make any of those kinds of decisions". Big sigh and relief. Right now the only thing that can apparently delay the launch of this game is quality, with bucket loads of spit and some polish released it will be.

A simultaneous Septermber-ish release date has been set.

Rod Fergusson Talks Gears of War, Insomniac

Eight player co-op and marked improvement in graphics with a Gears of War sequel endeavors as well as one hell of a mighty jab at Insomniac's co-op feature in Resistance: Fall of Man.

While not revealing much about a possible movie spin off he at least he did say they would be answering questions, not leaving the poor old fanboys in gasps desperately clinging together their own extensive theories to answer what will probably turn out to be simple problems.

It looks like were going to see Gears of War in 'books, comic books' which probably translates to graphic novel. It's interesting, apparently because the game was devoid of all information (early promotion material had more information about the storyline than the game itself) about the actual story Rod thinks as an IP Gears of Wars can expand heaps and heaps. He probably wants to do a Halo, like in the first a really awesome premise was set and in the sequel it was explained to a very satisfying degree.

On the graphics front Fergusson boasts that to Epic Gears of War is not a second generation title but a first generation title and that there is room to improve on the graphics for subsequent games. He made the claim after claiming that he's a producer and works with spreadsheets, way to kill the moment, mate.

Finally, the moment you've all been waiting for, on co-op Rod says how Epic wanted it to be an integral part of Gears of War, instead of having 'Master Chief 1, Master Chief 2' etc, etc. He believes that is the next natural evolution in multiplayer gaming to give it a social edge and he did not with-hold from criticizing Insomniac's co-op. In a copy-catish kind of tone read the following quote right out of Rod's mouth, Mr. Insomniac (being Impersonated by Rod): 'oh and the icing on the cake for us is co-op'. They had the splitscreen co-op as sort of their add-on and it was 'you're lucky we kind of threw this on'.

Ouch.


VIA IGN

New Halo 3 Multiplayer Details

And you thought the shield grenade was the coolest new feature for Halo 3, of course you didn't know about the slow mo and freeze time multiplayer replays, the modified assault rifle from Halo 1, the new 'teleporters' and of course the mystery X button function.

The X button was kind of an underwhelmer, I was hoping for something like cover amongst other things, turns out it is only good for deploying equipment, such as shield grenade (called the Bubble Grenade from here on in) and trip mines.

All images and information taken from the documentary, YouTube below,



The Assault rifle now has tighter aim, it has been brought on to replace the dual wielding SMG's as the preferred setup. Reasoning is here with dual wielding grenades and melee takes a back seat, hence the assault rifle is supposed to provide a more diverse gameplay experience by encouraging players to melee and throw grenades.


Bubble Grenade is a little ball, drop it with X and it surrounds you in a shield protecting you from incoming shots. Given it is spherical it will move around on the curved ground.



Replacing portals are 'cannons' which propel players through the map. The advantage of this (or disadvantage) over teleporting is that it gives other players from the opposing team the ability to kill opponents while they are in mid flight.



Definitely the coolest feature in Halo 3 and one that I'm sure the folks at Red VS Blue will be making much use of is the ability to freeze or go into bullet time and manipulate the camera in all manners. Snipe a guy, watch him getting sniped in slow motion, then watch him getting sniped from an action movie camera angle, etc, etc. If he's your friend rub it in, save it and send it to him, make a little movie out of it and put it on youtube, be your own movie director. No need to wait up for Peter Jackson.


Just for the love of it, some more Halo 3 screenshots. Bungie is emphasizing that all this is Alpha stuff and that the final game will look even better, heres hoping it will. Oh and Frankie, you promised the water will look absolutely stunning and have accurate physics (stuff about warthogs going through it and making waves), didn't see any water physics at all in the alpha, hope you weren't just pulling our legs.