Archive for March, 2008
Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action
Aside from being able to murder innocent people in cold blood, the soundtrack has to be one of the best parts of the Grand Theft Auto experience. Now, you’ll be able to take those tracks with you back into the real world without shelling out the bones for boxed soundtrack collections, thanks to a cool new service that will let you mark tracks for download in game.
It works like this: You hear a song you like, you’ll call an in-game service called “ZiT” on your mobile phone to mark it. You’ll get a text message with the song and artist name, as well as an email if you’re a member of the Rockstar Social Club. Said email will contain a direct link to download the song from Amazon’s music site for $0.89 to $0.99. What’s more, there’s no DRM, so you can do whatever you like with them.
While we’re usually not a big fan of extra ways to monetize games, this actually seems like a pretty ingenious way to integrate the service. This is pure conjecture, but wouldn’t it be interesting if the songs in-game (and available for purchase) continued to be updated? … That Rock Band money has to be pretty hard to ignore.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in PS3 News
On Sega of America’s forums, it seems that owners of the PlayStation 3 version of Condemned 2: Bloodshot are having problems with the sound playback of this new title.
If what forums users are saying is true, those gamers using a digital audio connection are having their gameplay interrupted by audio dropouts and "snaps" in the game’s first level. One forum member contacted Sega to complain of this and other gameplay problems. He received this reply from Sega support:
Thank you for writing. SEGA is aware of these issues and is actively investigating them. As the game is brand-new we are obviously quite concerned to hear of problems, in particular the controller issues.
For now, for the audio issue, if you are using an HDMI cable that is the likely cause of the audio problems. SEGA is investigating this as well, but in the meantime using a standard AV cable fixes the audio issues.
Ah, that’s a really crappy fix. Let’s hope that they get this patched some how. Going down from surround sound to stereo in a horror game is almost as bad as playing a music game in mono!
Are any of you suffering from this issue? Or are you playing the Xbox 360 version? After our review, I expect to hear plenty of "not at all" answers.
[Via Game|Life]
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Business
Whatever last remnants of identity clung to by both Shiny and The Collective were lost today as the duo were merged together by owner Foundation 9, creating a new, wholly unfamiliar entity known as Double Helix. Studio head Michael Saxs Persson calls the new name and logo, which were chosen from a pool of employee submissions, a “perfect” match for the company, adding that “making games is in our DNA.”
The founding follows the initial merger, announced last October, and according to Foundation 9 creates a studio “that is now able to build upon its previous experience to gain new heights in quality and efficiency.” And all it cost us was our fond memories of a simpler time spent playing the likes of MDK and Earthworm Jim. While the company remains coy regarding what it’s up to currently, today’s announcement notes that Double Helix is developing a trio of multi-platform licensed games, one of which we assume to be the already announced Silent Hill V.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Nintendo DS, PC, Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Rhythm, Business
Each week Jeff Engel and Geoff Brooks contribute Counting Rupees, a column on the business behind gaming:
When Guitar Hero 3 launched last year it was an immediate success, selling out at a fairly quick pace throughout the holiday season. Following just behind it was Rock Band, selling very well, but not nearly as quickly as Guitar Hero. So far, all versions of Guitar Hero III have sold about 9.1M copies, versus just roughly 1.5M for Rock Band. Of course, part of the discrepancy lies in the fact that Rock Band launched on two platforms while Guitar Hero 3 launched on four, but that is about to be remedied with Harmonix’s recent announcement of Rock Band for Wii. While Rock Band was a more ambitious game and representative of an evolution of the music game, it did seem like Activision may have made the right choice in buying the Guitar Hero publisher (and thus the Guitar Hero brand), but not the developer. With so much brand awareness already built into Guitar Hero, was there any way that Harmonix could possibly top the original creation that it no longer owned the rights to?
Continue reading Counting Rupees: Battle of the brands
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Features, Microsoft Xbox 360
This week at X3F, listen to the strangest Rock Band guitar replacement story on the Xbox 360 Fancast, download a sweet new race map for Halo 3, and nab your shot at winning Turok. Oh, and we’ve got the usual dose of news for your immediate (albeit belated) consumption. Enjoy.
Community Stuff
News
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Action
Rockstar has launched the final Grand Theft Auto IV trailer, subtitled “Good Lord, What Are You Doing? (a.k.a. Everyone’s a Rat).” Check out the video above, and while you’re at it, you can peep the game’s three other trailers after the break. Don’t forget to also keep track of publisher Take-Two’s family tree. The trailer will also be available for download on PSN and Xbox Live.
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Continue reading Grand Theft Auto IV: ‘Good Lord, What Are You Doing?’
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Nintendo DS, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sports
EA announced today that Madden NFL 09, the 20th Anniversary of its exclusive NFL license-holding franchise, will touch down in stores August 12. The company states there’ll also be a 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of the game featuring Madden NFL 09 and NFL Head Coach 09, along with “an extensive library of exclusive bonus video content” for $90.
So, let’s make a Hail Mary pass and wish the best for Madden ‘09. Initial data on last year’s Madden sales showed consumers weren’t that into the series anymore. Maybe this’ll be the year the franchise gets a major update bringing gamers in who don’t just buy the series like sheep year after year … stop laughing! One can dream, can’t they?
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Online
Taking a cue from Bungie’s stat-a-riffic Bungie.net service, Rockstar Games has just announced the Rockstar Games Social Club, “a new website that will extend your experience of Grand Theft Auto IV and all future Rockstar Games titles.” Line up against the Club’s stanchions at rockstargames.com/socialclub and be ready for registration on April 15th. All you’ll need is a Xbox Live gamertag and/or a PSN ID and an insatiable hunger for statistics. You’ve got one of those, right?
Once GTA IV launches, the site will offer the usual multiplayer leaderboards, along with a torrent of statistically generated functionality. The LCPD Police Blotter will show the most dangerous areas of Liberty City and the most commonly used weapons, using the “aggregated data of millions of connected players.” Similarly, the Liberty City Marathon will catalog the “the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam — to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped” and will hold competitions amongst players using this data. Other sections will track players who complete 100% of the game (they can win an “ultra-rare” bit of swag); a Hall of Fame, tracking the various leaderboard champs; and The Story Gang, a “single-player leaderboard.” Consider us interested. You could consider us even more interested if we knew the first thing about the game’s multiplayer functionality, outside of the occasional rumor.
Continue reading Track your GTA IV stats with Rockstar Games Social Club
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: Mac, PC, Microsoft Xbox 360
Hothead Games today punched its rambling epic, Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One (phew!), with a $19.95 price tag. That’s just over 30 cents a letter (colons not included), assuming cost is derived, as it is for all episodic games, by the title’s length. Currently, that price applies to all versions of the game, which include PC, Mac, Linux and Xbox Live Arcade editions. 1600 Microsoft Points ($20) would be new territory for digital distribution on Xbox 360, but clearly, Hothead and its two stars have made it a point to be living on the edge.
PC, Mac and Linux specs are posted after the break.
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Continue reading Penny Arcade Adventures priced at $20, specs released
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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Posted by: in Xbox360
Filed under: PC, Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360
The delayed (and further delayed) console port of World in Conflict is evidently making headway, ready to trade in its “just a PC-port” reputation for a shiny new subtitle. Allow us to introduce … World in Conflict: Soviet Assault. But this ain’t no simple re-titling.
As shown off in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine (Czech edition … what, you’re not a subscriber?), developer Massive Entertainment has managed to teach WiC: SA some new tricks. Of course, mapping the PC’s mouse and keyboard controls to a gamepad is a given (and being handled by porting developer Swordfish Studios), but what about a new campaign (play as the Russians, tovarish), more multiplayer maps, and some shiny new cut-scenes? That’s what the bean counters call a “value add.” In case you’ve already invested in that PC version, you can add some value to it with an expansion pack. That pack, as well as the Xbox 360 and PS3 releases, are scheduled to assault the nation’s (world’s?) retailers this Fall.
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SPONSORED BY: Age of Empires III - Real-Time Strategy Game Control a European power on a quest to colonize and conquer the New World. AOE3 introduces new gameplay elements, as well as new civilizations, units, and technologies. http://www.ageofempires3.com/
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