Items tagged with videogames
It's official -- Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console will ship in time of the holiday shopping season, a fact that will undoubtedly land it on holiday wishlists. During a press event today, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said the Wii U will be released on November 18 starting at $299.99. The $300 version comes with the console itself, a single Wii U GamePad controller, AC adapters, HDMI cable, and a sensor bar. It has 8GB of memory and will be available in white-only, at least at launch. There will also be a deluxe version for $349.99 that includes everything just stated, plus more memory (32GB), a GamePad charging pad, stands for the controller, and the "Nintendo Land" set of minigames....
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Sony isn't going to like this one bit, but the PS Vita is well on its way to being able to run homebrewed software. Yifan Lu, the developer-slash-reverse engineer guru responsible for jailbreaking Amazon's Kindle device and the PS Xperia (running PSX games on Xperia Play), is cooking up a homebrew loader for Sony's flagship handheld game console. The project is based on a PS Vita exploit Lu discovered, one in which he's not sharing with the public because then Sony would just plug the hole. It's also worth mentioning that the source code is still very much a work in progress, so there's nothing to share with PS Vita owners just yet. That's not going to give Sony warm fuzzies. If you recall, Sony...
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It may have taken Ubisoft a hundred million years to figure out that honest-to-goodness consumers really, really despise always-on Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes, but bless the publisher's heart for finally caving. Actually, Ubisoft did away with always-on DRM over a year ago, but is just now making it official. "We have listened to feedback, and since June last year our policy for all of PC games is that we only require a one-time activation when you first install the game, and from then you are free to play the game offline," Ubisoft's Worldwide Director for Online Games, Stephanie Perotti, stated in an interview. Perotti and Corporate Communications Director, Michael Burk, spoke at...
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In a little less than two weeks from now, Half Life fans will have an opportunity to relive (or play for the first time, as it were) Valve's original 1998 title Half Life, albeit reborn and modified using the company's Source engine. The ambitious third-party project is called Black Mesa (previously known as Black Mesa: Source) and it's been in development for eight years. "On September 14th you will see the first release of Black Mesa!," Black Mesa project leader, Carlos Montero, stated in a forum post. "This will include our re-envisioning of Half-Life all the way up to Lambda Core. We believe this is a great way to provide a complete-feeling 8-10 hour experience with a solid ending, make our...
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Microsoft is hoping a $40 price cut to its Kinect motion sensor for the Xbox 360 console will encourage more people to shake and gyrate to a growing catalog of supported games. The reduced price represents a 27 percent savings over the previous MSRP, and according to Microsoft, this isn't a temporary promotion. "The new permanently reduced price will be $109.99 in the U.S.," Microsoft stated in a blog post. "There will be also a permanently reduced price in North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific regions where Kinect is sold. Additionally, on October 4, the Kinect sensor will be available for a permanently reduced price in Australia and New Zealand." Microsoft didn't say why it lowered...
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In case you missed it over the weekend, Nintendo on Sunday semi-quietly launched its large size 3DS XL handheld console in the U.S. We say "semi-quietly" because it's long been known that the U.S. launch would take place on August 19th, though the day came and went without much fanfare. Regardless, you can get your hands on the 3DS XL at GameStop, Target, or Toys R Us. The $200 console is $20 more expensive than the regular 3DS, but packs larger displays. The top screen is 90 percent bigger at 4.88 inches, while the bottom display is 4.18 inches, which is also 90 percent bigger than the original. Note that the screen resolutions are the same on both models, so you're not getting more pixels,...
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New and used game retailer GameStop has been eager to jump into the streaming space ever since it acquired Spawn Labs and Impulse in 2011, and come next summer, the company's own cloud-based service will go live. At that time, it will not support consoles, even though that was originally the plan. "Based on consumer feedback, our success in selling mobile devices, and the imminent launch of new consoles, we have decided to move our technology to a PC-based model," GameStop president Tony Bartel said during a conference call." Details are still being hammered and more changes could be made between now and next summer, but the current plan is for GameStop's upcoming Spawn service to also support...
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If the only thing preventing you from purchasing a PS Vita is the price, Sony has some bad news. There will not be any price cuts in 2012. However, Sony did say that its engineers are working on certain cost reduction measures that will allow it to slash the price in 2013. "People like cheap or free," Sony boss Shuhei Yoshida said at Gamescon. "Of course, cost reduction is one area our engineering team is working on. But we just launched the platform earlier this year. It takes time to do so." In lieu of a price cut in 2012, Yoshida said he's hoping to increase the PS Vita's value proposition by "creating different types of bundles," such as the LittleBigPlanet PS Vita bundle pack. He also wants...
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If you've been around computer games for awhile, you may remember building sprawling cities on an Apple system way back in the day (when you weren't crossing the Oregon Trail, that is). Well, SimCity is heading back to the Mac platform six months from now, Electronics Arts announced today. "Whether you owned a Macintosh or a DOS PC, we all have memories of laying down zones and reticulating splines from our youth," said Lucy Bradshaw, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA’s Maxis Label. :To the millions of SimCity fans out there, we’ve been listening and can proudly say that your calls have been answered. SimCity has a long legacy on the Mac and the team at Maxis is ensuring...
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Years ago, you could walk into a computer store like Software Etc. and browse aisles and aisles of computer games and software. And today? Well, if you're a fan of boxed PC games, then taking trips to your local GameStop is a quick way to end up depressed, as the PC titles in most locations have been demoted to a single rack. Digital distribution is the wave of the future, and as far as Electronic Arts is concerned, that's where the focus should be. EA has said before that it believes digital downloads will overtake boxed game sales in the future, and lest anyone forgot, company COO Peter Moore recently reiterated that belief in an interview. According to Moore, that time is fast approaching....
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There have been all kinds of rumors and speculation surrounding Microsoft's next generation Xbox game console (codenamed Durango), and one of them is that it will ship with an improved Kinect motion camera device. How much improved? The answer to that question may have been revealed in a sample image purportedly taken from a Kinect 2 device running on an Xbox 720. The image was uploaded to Twitter (see below) and there's a question as to its legitimacy. However, some reports indicate its the real deal, plucked straight from Microsoft's Durango Xbox Development Kit (XDK). Image Source: Twitter (@superDaE) If the picture is genuine, then it bodes well for the next generation Kinect. Compared to...
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Activision Blizzard's mega popular MMORPG isn't called World of Warcrack for no reason, folks. The correct title, of course, is World of Warcraft (WoW), and it's been the leading cause for neglected hygiene for going on eight years. At last count, WoW was home to 9.1 million subscribers, Activision Blizzard revealed in its second quarter financial report. That's a heck of a lot of subscribers -- enough to maintain the game's rank as the most popular subscription-based MMORPG around -- but it's also 1.1 million lower than the 10.2 million paying players that were roaming Azeroth back in February of this year. Is WoW's run coming to an end? Probably not anytime soon, even if the drop in subscribers...
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Valve's Gabe Newell is one of at least two talking heads in the game developer arena that believes Microsoft's Windows 8 platform is bad for PC gaming (Blizzard is the other), and so he's put into motion a strategy to port the Steam platform over to Linux. Regardless of whether or not his reasons are sound, the Linux community has to be stoked, right? You would think so, but not everyone sees Valve's venture into open-source territory as a good thing. Richard Stallman, software freedom activist and creator of the GNU Project, believes there's an ethical dilemma with having non-free DRM'd games on GNU/Linux. "I suppose that availability of popular non-free programs on GNU/Linux can boost adoption...
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GameStop makes a killing selling used videogames, but what happens to that business model when digital distribution platforms run physical media out of town? That's not anything to worry about today, tomorrow, next week, or even next year, but at some point, GameStop will have to deal with the direction the games industry is headed, and it may already have a solution. GameStop CEO Paul Raines recently brought up the possibility of reselling used digital downloads. The idea is that GameStop could buy back your digital copy of any given game and then reissue the key to someone else. Obviously there are plenty of challenges involved, most of which relate to piracy, but GameStop sounds determined...
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