Latest Gear Live Videos
Nintendo’s Harrison: 20 Revolution Titles at Launch
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Rumors, Wii,
Gamesindustry.biz reports Nintendo of America Senior VP George Harrison has claimed that the Revolution will launch in the United States with around 20 titles. Supposedly 1/3 of the launch titles will be first-party games, with the remainder coming from third parties. Hopefully, this will mean a huge improvement from previous Nintendo product launches; the Gamecube launched in the US with 12 titles, and none of these were first tier properties, with the “biggest” names being Luigi’s Mansion and Factor 5’s Rogue Squadron. Without a real system-seller available at launch, the system never seemed to recover. Harrison admits Nintendo’s past mistakes, hoping to have a strong launch and strong follow-up over the next year.
Read More 
| Gamesindustry.biz
Advertisement
Datel Announces XSATA Availability
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Mods/Hacks, PC, Xbox 360,
Datel’s Xbox 360 Hard Drive connectivity solution is now available. At $39.99, it is a lot more expensive than the 360 Sata, but is clearly more polished. The XSATA sits sandwiched between the Xbox 360 and the hard drive, acting as a pass-through for normal operation. A USB 2.0 port sits on the back for connecting to the user’s PC. USB 2.0 compatibility makes connections to the PC a little easier, but it doesn’t look like the XSATA provides bus power for the hard drive, meaning the end user might have to lug the Xbox 360 to where ever the desktop computer sits.
Read More | CodeJunkies
Bethesda Announces Oblivion Patch
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: PC, Role Playing Games, Xbox 360,
Along with information about the upcoming paid content in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, comes the news that Bethesda is also working on a patch for both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game. In the official forums for Oblivion, the patch is noted as fixing unspecified “issues” that have been reported since the game shipped. In addition, there will be a localization patch for issues with the foreign versions of the game after the US patch has been validated. PC users will get a beta version of the patch initially, and assuming that this works out, the patch will be rolled out to all users.
This does seem to be another drift down in the realm of console game patching. Back on the original Xbox, there were minor update patches to Halo 2 for wide-screen play and Xbox Live tuning. Dead or Alive 4 had a patch to fix an issue where save games could be accidentally deleted, but this may be the first large scale patch of a shipped console game, and it will be interesting to see how this is handled. Microsoft themselves are aware that not all of their user base is going to be broadband enabled (or will have a network connection available for the Xbox 360) and have made their backward compatibility updates available by downloadable ISO or by ordering a CD. Bethesda may have to do the same thing to appease users that have non-network capable Xbox 360s. Depending on the size of the patch, those users without the external hard drive may also be left in the cold. No real information has been released as to the nature of the patch, so it will be interesting to see how Bethesda handles these issues.
Read More | Official Oblivion Forums
Xbox 360 SATA Adapter Review
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Hardware, Mods/Hacks, Xbox 360,
MaxConsole has a review of the pre-release Xbox 360 SATA adapter from 360 SATA. The short version of the review is that the device does exactly what it says it will do: allow users to connect their Xbox 360 hard drives to their personal computers without having to crack the case, allowing users to back up their save games or other information on the hard drive. MaxConsole received a pre-release unit, so it’s still the bare circuit board, and they are hoping the final version is a little more polished. The bare board definitely doesn’t do anything to inspire the most confidence in the world, but the target audience for this device probably won’t mind a whole lot.
Read More | MaxConsole
Microsoft Attempts to Bolster Japanese Market
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Xbox 360,
Microsoft’s Xbox Japan team held a press conference earlier to announce that there are more games coming, and that these games may actually make Japanese gamers want to buy an Xbox 360. Some of the highlights of the conference include a new RPG by Tri-Ace, developers of the successful Star Ocean franchise, Namco featuring Pac-man and Galaga on Xbox Live Arcade, and Square Enix announced that a new entrant in the Silpheed franchise will be appearing on the Xbox 360. Japanese gamers can expect roughly 80 titles by year-end, including a new Gundam title.
Despite all of the announcements, there still doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason for the Japanese to embrace the Xbox 360. RPGs and shooters have been announced, but it doesn’t feel like the Japanese developers are really 100% committed to the Xbox 360’s success in Japan. Really, the only game studio that has been truly committed so far has been Team Ninja at Tecmo; all of the games listed today seem to be second tier titles. Tri-Ace announces an RPG, but it’s not a Star Ocean game. Square Enix announces a shooter, but still hasn’t brought their A-list properties to the Xbox 360. Namco’s huge announcement was classic games on Xbox Live; what platforms haven’t gotten a Pac-man or Galaga port yet? The proof will definitely lie within the quality and popularity of the titles released in the coming year.
Read More | Gamespot Coverage
Read More | Business Week Coverage
Microsoft Acquires Lionhead Studios
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, PC, Xbox 360,
The rumors became official today, as Microsoft Game Studios acquired Peter Molyneux’s Lionhead Studios. This move bolsters Microsoft’s game development machine further, with Lionhead joining Rare and Bungie as another high profile game studio now focused on Xbox 360 development. Fable 2 should now be considered a dead lock to appear on the Xbox 360 (as if it wasn’t almost a certainty before), and this shouldn’t impact current title development negatively. Hopefully the additional resources Microsoft can afford will make it less likely that Peter Molyneux will continue to overpromise and underdeliver on his game releases. You can check out the full release, after the jump.
Click to continue reading Microsoft Acquires Lionhead Studios
Bit-tech.net has put together a small roundup of the more popular PSP video conversion applications available. They compare PSP Video 9, 3GP, and the ATI Avivo Video Converter. PSP Video 9 was given high marks for conversion format support, and relative ease of use. 3GP was dinged for being relatively obtuse in it’s usage, and the fact that it had a hard time producing video files in the correct aspect ratio. ATI’s Avivo had probably the best user interface, but is restricted to people with the ATI X1000 video card series. Of course, you can just head on over to the site yourself to check out the full results.
Read More | Bit-tech.net
More Super Monkey Ball Adventures Screenshots
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Action, Adventure, Nintendo Gamecube, PlayStation 2, PSP, Strategy,
4 Color Rebellion has scored some exclusive screenshots from the upcoming Super Monkey Ball Adventure. This game will be a departure from the previous games in the series, leaving behind the strict level structure and moving to more of a platform adventure design. Hopefully Traveller’s Tales can keep true to the feel of the older games in the series. Monkey Ball Adventure will be appearing on PSP, PS2, and Gamecube this summer.
Read More | 4 Color Rebellion
Racketboy’s Retro Gaming blog has a great round-up of the 2D fighting games that appeared on the Dreamcast during its short life. The Dreamcast managed to build a catalog of fighters that still hasn’t been matched on any of the next generation consoles, particularly if you were into the SNK/Playmore style of gameplay. The Dreamcast probably had the most King of Fighters variants of any console, and many of the later SNK games like Mark of the Wolves were awesome refinements of the 2D genre. Also of note was the madly infuriating but beautifully drawn Guilty Gear. While ports and sequels to these games can sometimes be found on next generation consoles, and older Street Fighter games have received historical collections, the games coming out on the Dreamcast at this time probably reflected the peak of the genre.
Read More | Racketboy.com’s Retro Gaming
Howard Marks on the New Acclaim
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Internet, MMORPG, PC,
GameDaily.Biz has an interview with the CEO of the new incarnation of Acclaim, Howard Marks. Previously, it was announced that after Acclaim’s demise, the name would live on in a new company specializing in online games. GameDaily.Biz and Howard Marks discuss strategy, and the types of games that Acclaim wants to bring to the marketplace, and the challenges of online gaming.
It’s interesting to hear the reasons why Marks wanted the Acclaim brand: “I decided that the Activision brand was very important because it had a lot of emotional value to millions of players… It’s a fabulous brand. Over 200 million people have played games that Acclaim has produced over the years, and my feeling was very strong that people have an emotional attachment to their experiences from when they were playing Acclaim games and they’ll find it equally as fun if not better with our new online games…”
Which games is Marks talking about? The slew of horrendously bad comic book and movie license games Acclaim cranked out in the 90s, like Fantastic Four, and Street Fighter: The Movie? Or quite possibly the worst port of a 2D fighting game on the Saturn with Mortal Kombat II, when the Saturn probably featured the best home conversions of 2D fighting games of the time? I’m guessing that Howard Marks wants gamers to remember Burnout and not the slew of mediocre to poor titles Acclaim foisted on the gaming public in the past.
Read More | Gamedaily.biz
Recent Galleries
Playfeed Categories
Playfeed Shows
Advertisement
© Gear Live Media, LLC. 2007 – User-posted content, unless source is quoted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Public Domain License. Gear Live graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, videos, articles, blogs, forums, scripts and other service names are the trademarks of Gear Live Inc.