We\’ll admit it can be quite boring waiting to complete your laundry, but this is just that one step too far. Some dude thought it would be a good idea to take down his TV and a Wii down to the dorm laundry room just so that he could be entertained by Metroid Prime 3 while he waited. It\’s a crazy world we live in…
SCE UK is to take the PS3 on a UK tour in a bid to show off its non-game capabilities and overall worth as an interactive entertainment hub. Marketing Manager Rosemary Buahin has commented that the main aim is to show off capabilities which go beyond gaming such as HD pictures, music, the Playstation Network and PSP compatibility in an effort to justify that it is a super computer designed for the living room environment.
The BBC has put up an article which discusses how crucial Halo 3 is to Microsoft\’s strategy for the Xbox 360. A specialist consultant has put forward the view that Halo 3 is much more than just a hugely profitable game, it will be the \’standard bearer\’ not only for what the Xbox can do but also have an impact om Microsoft\’s global profile. Another editor believes that MS has huge hopes for Halo 3 in that people will buy more than just a game and purchase a Gold subscription and downloadable content. The BBC also raises the question of how important third party developers are and whether strong interdependence will contine to which the earlier quoted consultant suggests the depdendence will continue as MS nor Sony can make enough games on their own to satisfy diverse consumer backgrounds.
In a recent 1UP podcast, former network director John Davidson claims that developers are considering not releasing games for the Xbox 360 outside of the UK due to poor Xbox 360 sales everywhere else in Europe. It has been spculated that Infinity Ward are planning to release COD 4 only on PS3 in the Far East, however this suggestion by Davidson\’s comments seem a bit too extreme. You can listen to his statements here at around the 01:44:45 mark. The above chart sourced from VG Chartz shows Xbox 360 UK sales in comparison to France and non Major European regions (this line doesn\’t include major EU countries). Things might be very strong in UK, but collectively in EU if you compare with Spain, Germany etc it isn\’t overly concerning.
Check out the following (hit read more as the video is too big for the front page and can\’t be scaled down) funny video clip of a TV news station reporting on how huge the Halo 3 launch was, beating the first day totals of Harry Potter and Spider Man. The male news reporter is eager to have a two player battle with his female colleague who shoots his character down by accident and comments she didn\’t realize there was guns so she thinks they better stop playing as she is blatantly dis-interested in Halo 3.
A website is claiming that Bungie has told attendees to a secret Microsoft event this month that they were indeed at work on a new sequel in the Halo franchise. Bungie reportedly did not elaborate any further (IF they did say what is rumored) although it is speculated that this could be an add-on pack or something like Halo - The Movie Game to be launched alongside the official Halo movie.
Recently at my university where I’m a student and a sys admin, we have been experiencing some odd outages, in particular since the 25th of September. The outages seemed to occur between 8 PM and 12:00 AM — peek gaming hours for our dorms. It just happens that Halo 3 came out on the 25th of September. Upon further investigation we found that our network routers were shaping TCP packets, but not UDP. Once we applied UDP shaping as well, all network outages ceased. Gamers complained, but university students attempting to access network resources such as our UNIX clusters were satisfied..
Dark_Alex earlier on released a v1.50 kernel add-on for M33 v3.71 custom firmware, you can check out his release at his official release thread.
David Hayter has confirmed that he has provided the voice over for Snake in Super smash bros. brawl on his youtube page. He said \”I am indeed voicing Snake in \”Smash Bros.\” I\’ve recorded it already, and I believe that fans of both games are going to be extremely happy. It\’s very cool. That\’s all I can say.\”
Nintendo\’s Reggie Fils-Aime has suggested that Halo 3 is not a system seller for Xbox 360 but of course is likely to sell a load of software units in itself. Reggie thinks that Halo 3 is being targeted towards the same demographic as the likes of BioShock and CrackDown which are all just similar multiplayer possible first person shooters questioning \’what\’s new\’ when it comes to Halo 3. Reggie then went on to say Nintendo feels no need to counter Halo 3 as they have a broad portfolio of games which are all targeted toward different consumer segments.
Sony has put up a teaser page for SonyDrive at Sony.jp and it is pretty difficult to guess what the special product will be. A portable computer, a portable touch sensitive LCD display HDD or perhaps a 1TB drive marketed for the PS3, right now this product is anyone\’s guess…
Playstation supremo Kaz Hirai has stated that the original price of the PS3 was perfect which is supported by the belief Sony couldn\’t supply enough units to meet demand in North American and Japan. Hirai remarked that initially it was not a pricing issue it was just a supply issue and fortunately for Europe Sony improved their supply capacity.
Peripheral maker Fanatec has revealed new information on its gaming wheel for the PC and PS3 licensed by Porsche known as the \”Porsche 911 Turbo S Nordschleife Edition\”. There are reportedly two versions with the limited one coming complete with a 1GB USB thumb drive which features the same design as the key of a Porsche. The wheels will be going on sale during mid December for a price of around $350 USD.
An artist by the name of David Johson has imagined what Master Chief would look like as Miss Chief. Johnson created the following 11.5 inch clay figure to help support the American Breast Cancer Foundation, with 10 percents of the eBay auction profits going to the mentioned charity. The figurine currently has a top bid of $338 slapped on it as visible at eBay.
Avid Halo 3 fans are reportedly fuming after finding out that the final retail copy of Halo 3 does not include a feature called \’XBL Public\’ which was made public knowledge during late 2006. The respective feature promised to allow players to search for public custom games which they could join via Live.