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The Library of Congress is currently investigating how to best preserve media in digital formats, including video games, according to a report from GameDaily.biz. The initiative, called “Preserving Creative America,” seeks to “collect and preserve the historic and cultural heritage of America, much of which is now being created only in digital form with no analog (physical) equivalent.” In accordance with this initiative, last month the Library held meetings with content producers in various digital media from a variety of fields including video games.
A large amount of content is currently being created in digital form; some of the Internet-based content is being collected by the Internet Archive at archive.org, but there are terabytes of digitally created information that is not being kept in any way. Certainly a strong argument can be made for the impact that video games have had on society. Many of the video game world’s icons have transcended the format, moving into other media and into the cultural consciousness, including figures like Mario and Lara Croft. Other games, like Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto attracted attention due to their notoriety. Preserving video games and other digital media may become important in understanding the cultural touchstones of the United States.
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| Gamedaily.biz
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Microsoft recently commisioned a report from Sperling’s BestPlaces, in order to find out the best cities in America for video gaming. The metrics that were used include: “number of video game systems owned per household…number of games purchased, number of game rentals, and frequency of online gameplay via Xbox Live or Windows games, among other factors.”
Given the relatively high geek factor in the area, and the fact that two of the three current video game console producers have their headquarters in the Seattle-Bellevue-Redmond area, this isn’t a particularly surprising result. But “best video gaming city” doesn’t seem like it would be a particularly good tourist draw; if anything, one would think this would detract people from coming. Also, with Xbox Live such a strong component of the survey, this would seem to make almost any city with decent broadband a good place to get your game on.
There certainly doesn’t seem to be a correlation between best gaming city and the Sperling “Best Places to Live” list; Seattle scores a dismal 88th on that list, with only Atlanta sharing a top ten spot on both lists. Seattle also scores really high on the “Most Stressful Cities” list. While Tacoma takes the top spot, Seattle is no slouch at number 11 on that list. Maybe the stress levels encourage playing a little more Grand Theft Auto than other cities. Shockingly, Seattle is ranked 5th on the list for best cities for dating, and 5th on the health list as well. Perhaps that speaks to how much Seattleites need those stress breaks, and how much they enjoy their recreation.
At any rate, the full list and press release is after the jump.
Click to continue reading Seattle Top Gaming City
Another 100 Bullets
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, First Person Shooters,
The last gamers heard of the 100 Bullets game, based on the noir comic book series by DC Comics, Acclaim had the license and was on track to release the game in the Fall of 2004. Acclaim’s crash and burn changed all that, and left the license in limbo. Today, Warner Bros. Interactive and D3Publisher of America announced that they are moving forward with the license, and are targetting consoles, the PC, and handhelds for a release in the third quarter of 2007. While the 100 Bullets comic book has a strong pedigree, having won both Harvey and Eisner rewards, D3Publisher is a bit of a blank. The company’s US website currently lists a Naruto game for both Gamecube and Gameboy Advance, where apparently mostly localization work took place. The site also lists a couple of licensed titles (presumably original) for the Gameboy Advance and a puzzle game for the PSP. Since the track record for Warner Bros. licensed titles has been spotty at best, the 100 Bullets must be considered a question mark at this time.
Press Release after the jump.
Click to continue reading Another 100 Bullets
New Xbox Live Message Center
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is back online, and with it comes some new features. While there is no dashboard upgrade (which was confirmed to be the case earlier,) there are some changes on Xbox.com. So, gamers with Xbox Live still don’t have the ability to download in the background, but now Gold members can send and receive text messages on the Xbox.com community site. Silver members can receive messages, and block messages, but not send. Voice messaging is not yet supported. Gamers without Xbox Live accounts can see some screen shots of the new interface in Major Nelson’s Flickr account.
Read More | Xbox.com
Read More | Interface screenshots via Major Nelson
The Magic Box has some scans of the recently announced PSP-based sequel to the quirky PS2 game, Gitaroo Man. The original game on the PS2 achieved a kind of cult-status, due to the fact that the game received very positive reviews but was difficult to buy, given the low number of copies produced by KOEI. The PSP version will be called Gitaroo Man Lives and will feature additional game modes that will take advantage of the PSP’s ad-hoc wireless networking mode for competitive and co-operative play. The Japanese release is scheduled for May 25th.
Read More | The Magic Box
ATI Aquires Bitboys Oy
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Hardware, Portable/Mobile,
ATI announced via press release that they are acquiring the bad boys of the graphics accelerator world, Bitboys Oy, for approximately $44 million US. Bitboys rose to fame on its early GPU announcements full of hype and promise, that would somehow not materialize, including the Pyramid3D chips and the Glaze3D chips that would supposedly toast the competition. Currently, Bitboys licenses GPU technology to mobile phone development companies, and has worked with providers such as Erikkson and NEC, and has received investments from companies like Nokia. While ATI is ostensibly acquiring Bitboys for its mobile technology, they may also be looking for a company that can output roughly four times the hype than ATIs current marketing provides.
Full Press Release after the jump.
Click to continue reading ATI Aquires Bitboys Oy
Electronic Business Online has published an article from Dean Takahashi, author of the book Opening the Xbox, which detailed how the original Xbox came to be. This time, he takes on the critical missteps that Microsoft made in the original Xbox, and how they tried to fix them in the new Xbox 360. The main problem Microsoft had with the original Xbox was the ownership of the hardware; built from largely off-the-shelf components from partners Intel and nVidia, Microsoft owned very little of the intellectual property for the engine that made the Xbox run. This would make reductions in cost very difficult, and in one case, these issues leaked into the public with Microsoft’s argument with nVidia over GPU costs. This also limited what Microsoft could do with the original Xbox, and while Sony was releasing a streamlined PSTwo to the market to revitalize their market share, Microsoft was stuck with the clunky Xbox. This would also bite them in their plans for the Xbox 360; since Microsoft did not own the IP rights to the GPU in the original Xbox, they would be forced to make a deal with nVidia to license their technology so that they could include backwards compatibility as a feature.
Click to continue reading Xbox 360: Learning from Failure
New Too Human Screenshots
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Action, Adventure, Screenshots, Xbox 360,
Gamerscoreblog has just dropped some new Too Human screenshots into their Flickr account. Too Human is being developed by Silicon Knights for the Xbox 360, and is scheduled for a Holiday release. Silicon Knights last handled the port of Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes to the Gamecube, but is probably more known for their mind-bending release, Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem. Too Human is another game with a long history; the original concept for the game was pitched for the Playstation, and then when Nintendo formed their partnership with Silicon Knights, the game was rumored to be heading to the Gamecube. However, when Silicon Knights ended their partnership with Nintendo and wound up at Microsoft, the game surfaced there. The Xbox 360 may finally be the platform that will support Silicon Knights’ ambitions with the game universe, and looking at these new screen shots in Flickr, one is almost glad that the game never saw the light of day on the Playstation. Some of the screenshots have huge resolutions available, all the up to 4200x3255, which may mean these are frame buffer grabs or target renders. There’s a lot of detail and varied environments in the screens, and it looks like Too Human will be awesome visually, at least, upon its release.
Read More | Gamerscoreblog Post
Read More | Gamerscoreblog Flickr Pool
HardOCP had a chance to talk with ATI about their work with Microsoft on the upcoming DirectX 10, to be included with Windows Vista. DirectX 10 seeks to reduce the overhead from previous versions of DirectX, as well as increase flexibility to support future GPU. Assuming that Windows Vista makes its currently announced ship date, when DirectX 10 is available, it will have been about 4 years since DirectX 9.0 was released. In that time, users have seen many advancements to the pixel and vertex shaders common in all DirectX 9.0 GPU. DirectX 10 will bring access to a new geometry shader, and support for cards featuring a unified GPU architecture. The Xbox 360’s GPU already supports a unified architecture; this allows a more streamlined use of the features integrated into a GPU, and give the GPU the ability to take on more generalized tasks. Since Halo 2 for the PC will require Windows Vista and the improved DirectX 10, gamers may see a superior port of the game.
Read More | HardOCP
Sin: Episode 1 Gold, Half-Life 2: Episode 1 Preload Next Week
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Action, Corporate News, First Person Shooters, Internet, PC,
Valve Software posted a quick update on their Steam website with some notes about some upcoming games. SiN Episode 1: Emergence has gone gold, and is available for pre-load via Steam now. The last SiN game was published back in 1999, and eventually would spawn an Anime movie, released in the year 2000. The new episode will be officially available on May 10th. In addition to the new SiN content, Valve announced that Half-Life: Episode 1 content will start pre-loading next week as well.
And, apparently, gamers can pick up a plush headcrab now. Just the thing to spice up a geek’s cube.
Read More | SteamPowered
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