Gaming News

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion out 27th April 2007
F.E.A.R now out 20th April 2007
NBA 2K7 now out 6th April 2007
Splinter Cell: Double Agent now out 30th March 2007
United Legends now out 27th April 2007

With only 4 downloadable games available at the Playstation 3's launch, 23rd March 2007:

Blast Factor
Gran Turismo HD
Lemmings
Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection

Apparently 1,782 out of 2,451 games will work, but many of them are listed as having "minor" or "noticeable" issues. The reason why less PS2 games work on the PS3 in Europe is because Sony changed one of the chips used to run the PS2 games to a cheaper version. This means Europe has an inferior Playstation 3 compared to the rest of the world.

485,000 DS
335,000 Wii
295,000 Playstation 2
228,000 XBox 360
176,000 Playstation Portable
136,000 Game Boy Advance
127,000 Playstation 3 (!)
24,000 GameCube
480 XBox

Microsoft have annnounced that there are 6 million Live! users across both XBox and XBox 360 consoles.

Blue Dragon is out in Europe, for the XBox 360, in September 2007.

Final Fantasy III, for the DS, is out in the UK on the 4th May, 2007.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion, for the Wii, is out in the UK on the 26th July, 2007.

CellFactor: Revolution, on XBox 360, has been cancelled.

DragonBall Z: Shin Budokai 2, for the Playstation Portable, is out in April 2007.

Asda has dropped the price of the Playstation 2 down to £50.

Konami has unveiled a Silent Hill spin-off light-gun game for the arcades, but the graphics are rather poor at present. They also unveiled a new 2D side-scroller called Otomedius, which sounds like a pseudo-sequel to Sexy Parodius.

Capcom has revealed that former developers from Clover Studio are working on Resident Evil 5, whilst others are working on a new Wii game, headed by Kenji Inafune (creator of Megaman and Dead Rising).

Square Enix has confirmed that ActRaiser (by Square), on the SNES, is coming to the Wii's virtual console. Nintendo also confirmed that Neogeo and MSX games will be heading to the Wii's virtual console soon.

The Wii News Channel went live in Japan today, a day ahead of its expected launch. The company had previously said it would be available in both Japan and the US on Saturday, and the UK launch date is said to be imminent.

In Japan the service carries news stories from a variety of sources through a feed from Internet portal Goo. In the US the news will be provided by the Associated Press.

The service is accessible from the Wii's main menu after a software refresh. Nintendo also offers a web browser for download, and an internet connection is needed to use the service. A button for the Wii news channel sits alongside another for a companion weather service which provides access forecasts and other data.

The services are part of Nintendo's attempt to make the Wii about more than just gaming. The company hopes to expand the gaming market, in part by offering useful services that encourage people to switch on their console on more frequently.

Nintendo sold 3.2 million Wii consoles worldwide in the last two months of 2006, with 200,000 selling in the UK over the Christmas period.


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GameDaily BIZ has just received the news that Sony has officially shipped one million PS3 units in North America; this mark was reached six weeks after the console's launch on November 17, 2006.

In fact, despite the shortage troubles that Sony dealt with at launch (due to a lack of blue laser diodes), the PS3 has become the fastest selling PlayStation console to date. It's also worth noting that Microsoft's Xbox 360 sold around 600,000 units in a similar timeframe after its launch.

"SCEA went to great lengths to help meet demand for PS3, including airlifting systems into North America on a weekly basis to ensure a steady stream of units were available to consumers throughout the holiday season," commented Jack Tretton, president and CEO, SCEA. "The fact that we were able to reach the one-million mark faster than our top-selling platform, PS2, further validates the strength of the PlayStation brand and our belief that consumers are ready to experience true high-definition gaming."

SCEA was quick to point out that their other platforms, the PS2 and the PSP, also performed well throughout 2006 and into the holiday season. The PS2 "continued to enjoy record-breaking sales," while demand "remained strong" for the PSP. Said Tretton, "Reaching the one million mark for PS3 is the first of many major milestones for us as we head into a new year. Even more impressive, is that we were able to accomplish this feat while successfully managing two other platforms—PS2 and PSP. With three PlayStation platforms now available to users, 2007 will be about software and delivering innovative, new experiences and award-winning franchises to consumers, both through retail and through our online PlayStation Network."

In addition to revealing its holiday shipment numbers for PS3, SCEA announced that its motion-sensing Sixaxis wireless PS3 controller has been recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award. And the PS3 has been honored with other awards at CES, including the CES Best of Innovations Award for 2007, PC World's 20 Most Innovative Products Award, Sound & Vision's Editor's Choice Award and Digital Entertainment Group's (DEG) Emiel N. Petrone Digital Innovation Award.

Sony said that it remains on track to hit its target of six million PS3s shipped worldwide by March 2007.


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The incident took place on Saturday, but details have only now been released following an investigation carried out by local police. The victim was named as Connor O'Keefe, 7.

Officers said the boy's death was an accident caused because Connor was still wet after a dip in the pool of the hotel at which he and his parents were staying. Police believe he either plugged in the power adaptor or attempted to remove it. Either way, water from his body made contact with the electricity supply with fatal consequences.

Police said the boys hotel, the Sunset Beach Hotel in Patong Beach, Phuket, was not to blame for the accident.


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Sega has announced that Virtua Fighter 5 -- a former PS3 exclusive -- has moved over to the Xbox 360. Sega also offered a few more bits of information; The PS3 will still be getting a timed -- albeit short -- exclusive with the PS3 launch in Europe. The Xbox 360 version will be hitting Europe and North America in Summer 2007.

The exodus of PS3 exclusivity should start worrying Sony. Microsoft has been doing a better job of tying down exclusive content and Sony doesn't want to wage the console war utilizing in-house studios exclusively. It could be the already declining interest in the PS3 and questionable production capabilities that are convincing companies to move the the already established Xbox 360 platform.


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The Nintendo Wii won in the category of Home Entertainment as "The Console That Gets You In The Game", beating other products such as the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray disc player and Hitachi 37HLX99 LCD HDTV. The PlayStation 3 was not included in this years nominations.

The explanation for the Wiis award, according to the magazines Web site, is as follows:œRemember when videogames were fun? When the controllers had only a couple buttons and you didn't have to spend an hour learning the seven-step finger dance for walk?™ Nintendo does, so it took a step back, looked at its superpowered competitors, and took a totally different path with its new console, Wii.


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Demand for Wii has been so great that shops throught Europe had large queues forming outside for days in advance of the and hundreds of shops opened their doors at midnight on launch day to sell to avid gamers. After just one weekend on sale, shops across Europe sold out of Wii consoles and anxious gamers are still awaiting stock to be replenished. In the UK most major retailers are still waiting for stock to fullfil their pre-orders.

As in the US, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess proved to be the favourite launch title with 240,000 copies sold over the launch weekend, representing 74 per cent of all hardware purchasers. Wii Play, released so far only in Europe and Japan, was the second most popular with over 50 per cent of console owners purchasing the game, which is bundled with a second Wii remote.

Nintendo Europe further announced that Nintendo DS enjoyed a record-breaking week with 515,000 units sold across Europe last week - the highest week's sales since the consoles launch. Since its release in March 2005, over 8.5 million Ninetendo DS consoles have sold across Europe.

"Wii has become an overnight success in Europe with people of all ages rushing out to get their hands on the console. Even at this early stage it is clear that Wii is delivering on its promise to expand the gaming market, with a uniquely diverse audience all keen to experience the sensation for themselves," said Laurent Fischer, marketing director for Nintendo Europe.

"For those who were unable to buy Wii during the launch weekend, rest assured more stock is already on its way and we are doing everything possible to ensure that a steady supply of Wii units is shipped to stores across Europe throughout December and into 2007, he added.


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Dreamcast & Gamecube PSO servers are closing on 1st April 2007.

Get back on for one last play. I will be there.

The update improves the machine's picture output, with better support for 1080i screen resolution over 720p. Also, Blu-ray films can now be viewed in YUV instead of RGB, which should reduce loss of quality in converting HDMI images.

USB support is also improved so that contents of the machines hard disk can be backed up to USB devices.


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Once again supplies were extremely limited and with fanboys queuing up to three days in advance of the launch consoles again sold out within minutes.

In fact, frustrations grew so large for disappointed punters that spates of violence erupted outside some stores with reports of fists thrown outside a Best Buy in Michigan, a Walmart store forced to close in Southern California, police being called to an outlet in New York, a spate of muggings, shots fired in (where else) Texas and gunman robbing a California store of its PS3 stock. I don’t remember reports like this in Japan.

As for American press reaction to the PS3 as predicted it hasn’t been quite as all exultant as the ever loyal Japanese but reviews have been favourable with most stating it is worth the high price ($600) considering the raw horsepower on tap and the Blu-ray drive. That said issues have already come to head after it was discovered the console doesn’t upscale DVD content to HD and there are issues running many PSOne/PS2 games. Furthermore it is widely accepted that the console lacks a killer launch title.

Still since it has been reported that Sony is losing $241.35 on every ‘premium’ PS3 sold and an even more massive $306.85 on the 20GB version perhaps we can finally cut the company a break... then forget it when we remember our four month wait.

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Although we already spoke with Sony once (see end of story below), SCEA has since followed up with us after we posted this story. The representative explained, "There is absolutely no truth to the report that Sony is limiting launch allocations to a select number of retailers. Every single authorized SCEA customer is receiving product at launch."

Of course, it could depend on what "launch" means. The retail memo suggests that Rhino would get shipments about one week later, which could still be considered a "launch time frame."

Original story:

It's already a given that Sony's PlayStation 3 will be in extremely limited supply when it launches on November 17. Now, however, it seems that your chances of getting the new console at anywhere but the biggest retail chains will be essentially zero around launch.

GameDaily BIZ has obtained a memo from a small retail chain called Rhino Video Games—headquartered in Florida and operates about 75 stores in ten states—indicating that Sony won't be sending the retailer any PS3 units to sell at launch because it's limiting shipments to the top five retailers.

The memo, sent from Rhino headquarters to all stores, reads in part, "Unfortunately, Sony will not be fulfilling our order requests for PS3 hardware to be available on launch date, November 17th. Sony has decided to limit the supply of hardware (systems and accessories) to its top five volume retailers (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.)."

It's not clear who these top five retailers are, but in addition to the abovementioned Wal-Mart and Target, we would guess Best Buy, GameStop/EB and Circuit City. Recently, Amazon.com backed out of offering any PS3 pre-orders, while Fry's Electronics cancelled some of its pre-orders and GameStop admitted that it would not be able to fill all of its pre-orders.

The Rhino memo is further backed by a statement on the company's website, which reads: "Unfortunately, due to industry-wide extreme hardware allocations imposed by Sony, Rhino will not be receiving any PS3 systems on launch day, November 17th. We want to sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause. Sony has simply been unable to meet demand for this product. Sony has informed us that limited quantity shipments of PS3 hardware should be available over the next couple of weeks and will be available on a first come/first serve basis."

The memo adds to that, explaining, "First and foremost, this will be a stressful time for customers as systems will be hard to find. Remember to be patient with all customers and encourage them to take advantage of our system in stock guarantee. While it isn't definite, Sony has informed us that PS3 hardware should be available the week after Thanksgiving. Recommend to all customers that they call back often to check availability."

We contacted Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) about the retail order situation. However, SCEA wouldn't confirm or deny the information found in the memo. A spokesperson simply told us, "We do not disclose retailer allocations."

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100,000 of the special edition consoles that come with a Blue Dragon faceplate, five miniature figures and the game Blue Dragon, have already sold out with another 90,000 on their way.

According to 1up.com, one major online retailer managed to sell out of their allotment in five minutes, with others managing to last most of the day.

This comes just weeks before the release of the PS3 in Japan, and it's a much-needed boost for Microsoft where most weeks it has been struggling to shift even 1,000 units of the 360 in the land of the rising sun.

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The man behind it is Kevin Allen, who has set up Lazyfitness.org and devised a ten stage fitness routine kids can do, console in hand, that will improve their strength, stamina, flexibility and even burn calories. The routine can last from 10 minutes to an hour - burning up to 300 calories without ever losing control of the game.

Want to know more? Read on after the turn for 10 exercises. Or visit Lazyfitness.org for around 500 more, plus exercises for lazy adults!

1. Power Kick

Kick ass on your console with these tough kicks, which help strengthen kids legs and hearts fast. Start jogging on the spot and kick your heels back as high as possible while jogging. Keep going for one minute for a lower body warm up.

2. Bling Butt

From a standing position, squat down, hold for two seconds, then rise slowly to the count of four. Repeat ten times. Tones legs, butt and lower back.

3. Big Guns

Kids shouldn't workout with heavy weights but they can develop muscles of steel with tension exercises. Hold control pad while standing. Lightly squeeze the pad inwards with hands while tensing arm muscles hard. Reverse by lightly pushing outwards on the pad while maintaining muscle tension. Repeat regularly. Tones arms, shoulders and chest.

4. Zap Six Pack

A six pack with no sit ups. The laziest way to strengthen the stomach is to tense the muscles and not let go. From a standing position lightly tense your stomach muscles and hold this tension while you play. Works well for any level of fitness.

5. Macho Man

A tough karate pose. Stand with your feet a shoulder width apart. Take your right leg back and bend your front leg, keeping the back leg straight. Stand still for up to 30 seconds then change legs. Fast strengthening and static stretching for legs and bums.

6.Sumo Slammer

From a standing position take your legs twice shoulder width apart and bend your legs, lowering your bum as if you were going to sit down on an invisible chair. Sit like a Sumo for 30 seconds to stretch and strengthen the legs and bum.

7. Kung Fu Crane

This stealthy Kung Fu posture develops motor skills of co-ordination and balance. Stand on one leg and bring the other one off the floor. Turn knee of raised leg outwards and bring the foot close to knee of the standing leg like a Crane. Balance for as long as you can then change legs.

8. Wild Child

Go wild with this great heart pounding cardio workout. Start jogging on the spot slowly for a few seconds then bust into a super fast sprint on the spot for 15 seconds or so. Slow back down to a jog, before busting back into a sprint. Keep rotating between slow and fast for five minutes.

9. Karate Crunchers

Karate-style sit ups. Lie on the floor with control pad in front of you. Bend knees and slowly sit up to an angle of 30 degrees while gently tensing stomach muscles then lower back to the floor. Support your feet under a chair and couch for added support if needed. Advanced move twist to left or right on way up. Complete 10 sit ups.

10. Lazy Legs

Lie flat on the floor, legs out straight. Lift one leg off the ground at about 45 degrees and hold it up 10 to 15 seconds or for as long as you can. Return your foot to the floor and repeat with the opposite leg. A great exercise for the deep stomach muscles.

Source: www.techdigest.tv/2006/10/games_console_w.html

Source for all 4 articles:

For those of you that believe in religions with karmic tendencies, scoops like this meant one of two things, the wings of the plane are about to fall off and I am going to die in a fiery ball, or worse yet, the movie selection will be worrisome. Cell memory access appears to be broken, RSX has half the triangle setup rate of the ATI chip in XBox360, and the true horror, Big Momma's House 2 and a Queen Latifa movie.

With the movie selection still making my brain throb from the glances I caught, I furiously took notes on what the source was saying. He started out saying that the RSX can only write about half as much vertex data as it can fetch, not an ideal situation by any stretch, but survivable.

Then came the horrible news, RSX appears to be limited to setting up 275 Million triangles/second, anemic compared to the 500+ million in XBox360. When asked about this apparent thumping dished out by MS, the reply from one notable ISV relations boffin was a terse 'What a Piece of Junk'. Talk about a steak in the heart.

Half the triangle setup capability in the PS3, could things get worse? Yes, far far worse, how about another disparity of three orders of magnitude? No, I am not joking, looking at Sony's own figures, Cell appears to be pretty badly broken.

For main memory, it looks like Cell has about 25GBps of main memory bandwidth, and RSX is about 15-20GBps. Achievable bandwidth is between about two thirds of that and nearly 100%, clearly the elves in the caves surrounding Rambus central did something right with XDR. That is the happy news.

For local memory, the measured vs theoretical bandwidth is missing, I wonder why? RSX is at a solid 22.4GBps for both read and write, good job there green team. Then comes the blue team with Cell. Local memory write is about 4GBps, 40% of the next slowest bandwidth there. Then comes the bomb from hell, the Cell local memory read bandwidth is a stunning 16MBps, note that is a capital M to connote Mega vs a capital G to connote Giga. This is a three order of magnitude oopsie, and it is an oopsie, as Sony put it "(no, this isn't a typo...)".

If you can write at 250x the read speed, it makes Cell local memory just about useless. That means you do all your work out of main memory, and the whole point of local is, well, pointless. This can lead to contention issues for the main memory bus, and all sorts of nightmarish to debug performance problems. Basically, if this Sony presentation to PS3 devs shown to us is correct, it looks like PS3 will be hobbled in a serious way.

The next slide goes on to say "Don't read from local memory, but write to main memory with RSX(tm) and read it from there instead", and repeats the table numbers. This is very very bad. The number of times the presentation goes on to say that it is correct, and the lack of anything like "this will be fixed by production steppings, so take measures X, Y and Z" say to me that it is not a fixable snafu. Remember at E3 when I said that the PS3 demos there were object sparse? Any guesses why?

Someone screwed up so badly it looks like it will relegate the console to second place behind the 360. All the devs I talked to were lukewarm on the 360 architecture but universally negative on the PS3. Revelations like this go a long way to explain why you keep hearing about simmering problems from the Sony devs.

You end up with a console with half the triangle setup rate of the 360, a crippled CPU that is a bitch to program, and tools that are atrocious compared to the 360. To make matters worse, you have an arrogant set of execs telling us that twice the price is worth it for half the power, a year late. If it isn't already too late, Sony had better do something about this recto-cranial inversion or it may very well sink the console.


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THQ have said that Juiced 2, Destroy All Humans! 2 and Tak 4 will be at E3 on current-gen systems with The Outfit 2 and Saints Row on XBox 360 and Juiced: Eliminator for the Playstation Portable (PSP).

The Club is a third-person shooter by Bizarre Creations (Metropolis Street Racer/Project Gotham Racing) which is to be published by Sega.

Codemasters has confirmed Colin McRae Rally '07 will be on XBox 360 and the Playstation 3. It will include online modes and races with multiple cars.

Atari (Infogrames) has announced a Battlezone follow-up to the remake from Pandemic (for the PC) which is heading for the Playstation Portable. Paradigm Entertainment (Pilotwings 64) are making the new version which is due out in November 2006.

In the "spring":- Macromedia Support, the ability to download podcasts, a Chinese font set, software support for GPS and the PSP Camera to allow developers time to include them in games - the GPS and Camera peripherals aren't due out until September and October respectively.

In the "summer":- video podcast support and "expand the video profile for the UMD", whatever that means.

In the "winter":- the ability to boot downloaded games from memory sticks and VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)

The US list for XBox backward compatibility games for the XBox 360 has been updated:

Black
Star Wars: Battlefront II
World Soccer Winning Eleven 9

IGN has stated that Halo 3 will be out March 2007.

US magazine EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly) states that Final Fantasy XIII is a Playstation 3 exclusive and expects a trailer of the game to be shown at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in May.

1) Madden NFL '06 (Playstation 2)
2) Fight Night: Round 3 (XBox 360)
3) Fight Night: Round 3 (Playstation 2)
4) Call Of Duty 2 (XBox 360)
5) Animal Crossing (Nintendo DS)

More than 1,000 people queued up at 6:30am outside one of Tokyo's biggest stores when the 2 new DS coloured units (Enamel Navy and Ice Blue) were released on 11th March.

Bioware (Knights Of The Old Republic and Jade Empire) have recently merged with Pandemic (Star Wars: Battlefront) and have created a new studio based in Austin, Texas.

Animal Crossing: Wild World - 31st March
Tetris DS - 21st April
Metroid Prime: Hunters - 5th May

Karina Adebibe, a 20 year old model from Bethnal Green, London (UK), was plucked from being a Top Shop sales assistant to portray Lara Croft in commercials and to go on various chat shows.
Previous Lara Croft's include Natalie Cook, Rhona Mitra, Lara Weller, Nell McAndrew and Vanessa Demouy.

The Opera browser for Nintendo DS will be sold as a DS card. You simply insert the card into the Wi-Fi enabled Nintendo DS, connect to a network, and begin browsing on two screens.


Source: http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=2901