The rumours are true :( Sega are going to review the amount of traffic DC online servers (excludes PSO servers) have and may decide to switch them off. However, this only affects Sega games. Games run by other companies may remain online for a while longer :)
Alex 'Dreg' Nikitin has insured his fingers for £375,000! Alex is one of several British competitors taking prt in the World Cyber Games that were held in Korea this week.
The Sega game bundle for the XBox has now hit the UK under the name 'Sega Christmas Pack' where you get an XBox and 2 free Sega games (Sega GT 2002 & Jet Set Radio Future).
28/10/02
It looks like a new videogames rating scheme will be put into action by the Interactive Software Federation of Europe (ISFE?!). Games will now be rated using new categories and symbols to show whether they are suitable for children, teenagers or adults and what kind of content is in the game (eg. blood/gore, swearing etc.)
A Taiwanese man has died after playing computer games in an cyber cafe for 32 hours straight.
After the recent sniper attack in the US some games based around guns being used to kill people have been removed from shops and/or TV advert schedules. The 2 games that have been affected so far are Hitman 2, by Eidos, which has been pulled from ESPN's advert schedule and Sniper: Path Of Vengeance, by Xicat, which Wal-Mart has removed from its shelves.
Take 2's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will be released on November 8th. Take 2 are also releasing a 7 CD set featuring music from the 80's pricd at around £29.99.
Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness and Championship Manager 4 have both been delayed until Februarry 2003.
26/10/02
Flashback time..... Flicking through my old gaming diaries I came across an article dated 10/10/2000 which stated 'Korean firm were developing a hand-held, GP32, to be released later this year in Japan'. That was 2 years ago and personally I didn't here anything about a Japan release (if it was released), but it should be out in the UK before this Christmas.
Acclaims Croydon studio's, Probe, closed down around 5/7/00. Probe were responsible for classic MegaDrive games such as Robocop Vs. Terminator, Alien 3 and the best forgotten Saturn game Alien Trilogy, which after it was released the programmers admitted to using less than half the Saturns power in the game.
An article dated 10/5/00 stated that Panty Raiders was released in Japan for the PS2 where you went around photographing cyberbabes in scantily clad outfits!
Sega have put characters on some of the PSO lobby's on the DC servers, that monitor and cheating/hacking etc. (including RSOD's, FSOD's, PK'ing etc.). The characters have the names 'Millenium' and when you use the R trigger to cycle through name/C-mode rank it will say Android. This is the sad, but only way online games will ever become safe again.
ELSPA has released figures that show that game sales for the first 9 months of this year reached £684 million (in the UK), 12.5% more on last year. Expected games sales for this Christmas are likely to be around the quarter of a billion pounds!
Microsoft is threatening to pull its XBox from Australia after they have legalised 'mod chipping' which allows XBox's to run imported and illegal games/software.
21/10/02
Blockbuster have bought games retailer Gamestation and now has control over all 64 Gamestation stores. Blockbuster aims to use Gamestation to try to go head to head with the UK's no.1 games retailer, GAME.
Sega of America have been accused of racial discrimination after firing 12 Filipino games testers. The US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission are seeking cash damages for emotional distress and lost income for the 12 involved.
Strategy Analysts have revealed some statistics that suggest that by the end of this year Sony will have sold 50 million PS2's worldwide, while Nintendo will have sold 10.8 million GameCube's and Microsoft 8.2 million XBox's.
Several US retailers are refusing to put BMX XXX, by Acclaim, on store shelves because of the controversial content in the game which includes very scantily clad women and swearing amongst other things.
19/10/02
Dont forget Emily Booth (aka Bouff) will be presenting OutThere! on Channel 5, UK, tomorrow night :)
Rumours suggest Sega may switch off all DC online games servers on December 24th :(
16/10/02
Remember the Fair Play campaign as mentioned on 9th October? Now theres an online petition so click on the link below to sign it:
The results for the Gaming Bafta's are below (and the PS2 didn't win a thing!):
Pikmin won the Interactive Award Luigi's Mansion won the Audio Award Halo won the Best Console Game and Best Multiplayer Game Awards Grand Prix 4 won Best Sports Game Neverwinter Nights won Best PC Game
14/10/02
Joytech are going to release a steering wheel add-on based on the Williams Formula 1 cars steering wheel!
After an 86 hour gaming session in an internet cafe in Kwangui, South Korea, a 24 year old man is dead. The unnamed man was addicted to games and witnesses at the cafe said he never slept or ate during his 86 hour gaming marathon.
A new anti-theft device locks games discs inside their boxes and anyone who does try will find it impossible to get them out without severely damaging them.
Sorry guys (and Emily) I got the time wrong! The first show of the 3rd series of OutThere! (Channel 5, UK) was on at 11:55pm, but last nights one was on at 11:30pm, which is also the time for next weeks one too!
13/10/02
Nintendo are smiling after Super Mario Sunshines first weekend on the shelves which saw 175,000 copies of the game sold in Europe. According to Daniel Gosen, of Nintendo Europe, Super Mario Sunshine sales are eclipsing Super Mario 64 sales by 3:1 !!
Microsoft are staging a Play More Challenge next month which will see XBox gamers fighting it out for the £10,000 grand prize. If you want a chance of winning then you'd better get practising on Quantum Redshift. For more info visit:
Emily Booth (aka Bouff) is now presenting the 3rd series of OutThere! on Channel 5 (UK) at 11:55 on Sundays. If you want more info then check out the official Bouff site at:
If your a Dreamcast user then you might like to know that there is now a 'Dreameye' forum on the Sega Europe chatboards where those of us with Dreameye (a digital camera/webcam for the Dreamcast which was only released in Japan) are posting up video's and pics. Sorry but the vid's can only be viewed by Dreameye users at present.
12/10/02
Nintendo is no longer the leading games firm in Japan! Konami is! From April to Septemeber this year Konami sold 3.2 million games in Japan compared with Nintendo's 2.4 million.
Acclaim are under fire from the UK Government forpromising to pay the fines of any motorist caught on camera on the day that Acclaims Burnout 2 game is released, 11th October 2002. The UK Government accuses Acclaim of trying to promote speeding & wreckless driving while Acclaim said that they were just trying to "ease the financial pain" and that they condemn speeding.
Des Lynam is to dye his moustache purple! Nintendo is sponsoring Des Lynam's moustache for a year to mark the release of Super Mario Sunshine on the GameCube. However Des won't be keeping his moustache purple.
Microsoft are getting desperate to increase sales of their XBox machine by announcing a 'Sega Bundle'. The bundle will see every XBox bought come with 2free games, Sega GT 2002 and Jet Set Radio Future.
9/10/02
An embarassed Greek government have changed the law that apparently banned all forms of videogames in Greece, so that it now only applies to games that allow online gambling, which was what the law was intended for in the first place.
Nintendo have lowered it's profit forecast for the next 6 months after previously strong Nintendo markets - Germany & Japan - aren't selling as many GameCubes as previously predicted.
After Microsoft have just bought Rare, rumours have sprung up that they are after the beat'em up giant Capcom (also responsible for other classics like Strider and Resident Evil) after they announced that they expect to lose £66 million in the financial year ending 2003. Capcom put the blame on 'real-estate' problems....
Sega is to establish a new subsidiary company with D3 called '3D AGES' which will focus on converting old Sega classics, including Sonic, Ecco and Golden Axe exclusively to the PSone.
Fairplay are hoping to lower the average videogame price from £40 to £20 by declaring 1st - 8th Dec "Don't Buy A Videogame Week", to try to demonstrate th mount of public interest in the issue. For more info follow this link:
Sony are planning to release an add-on that will allow the PS2 to access and manipulate broadband signals putting them one step closer to their original vision of the PS2 becoming a 'home entertainment system', as they hope to use the add-on to stream TV and or video's to the PS2.
After Sega underestimated the demand for the DC's online applications (eg. in the good old days of DreamArena) when they were first launched, it seems Microsoft have learnt from that. With the imminent launch of XBox Live looming they are building 4 specialised 'data centres' - 2 in the US, 1 in London and 1 in Tokyo - to manage the online services. This will allow Microsoft to be solely responsible for the online networks and billing.
2/10/02
Microsoft are to release the Controller S for the XBox in Europe in November. Its a smaller version of the original XBox controller with buttons rearranged to be more comfortable to use.
Microsoft have changed the layout of the XBox's motherboard meaning that its now cheaper to produce and hackers can no longer easily modify or "chip" the machine.
A Doom film is to be made by Warner Brothers within 12 months or the licensing agreement ends with ID Software.