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Half-Life 2: Episode Two Delayed Again

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Electronic Arts, First Person Shooters, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,

HL2 Orange Box PS3 EA and Valve Software officially announced the Half-Life 2: Episode Two packages that will be available at retail for the PC, Xbox 360, and the Playstation 3. Gamespot reports that two retail SKUs will be available, the Orange Box, which will include Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 & 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. This box will be available on the PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. The Black Box, only available for the PC will include Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. Pricing was not discussed for either set. Slipped into the announcement was a change in the release date; the game is no longer set for a summer release and is now targeted for the fall or winter quarter. One of the supposed advantages of the episodic release format was a shorter development cycle between releases; now it appears that Episode 2 will hit retail around 18 months after the release of Episode 1. We know Valve likes to release things when they are ready, but the continued delays are getting to be tiresome.

Call Of Duty 3 Map Pack Broken

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Activision, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace,

Call of Duty 3 Valor Map Pack Gaming blog 2old2play is reporting that the Valor Map Pack, the 800 point content add-on for Call of Duty 3 shipped in a non-functional state. Referring to multiple complaints on the Xbox forums, it appears that a small percentage of people have gotten the content working by deleting previously downloaded content, but a majority can not get the maps to work. A post by a Treyarch employee indicates that they are working on the problem, but this appears to be an ongoing quality assurance issue for Xbox Live content. Xbox Live Arcade games and downloadable add-on content for other games have shipped in partially functioning states, and retail games have also seen issues. It appears that Microsoft’s certification testing team can find some issues; anticipated releases like the Crackdown demo have been delayed because of problems found during certification. Balancing the release process against the risks of not finding issues can be difficult, but it seems like major issues are going unnoticed.

More Doom Titles Leaked For Xbox 360

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: First Person Shooters, Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade, Xbox Live Marketplace,

Doom Siliconera has pored through the ESRB online rating database again, and this time it looks like a couple of potential Xbox 360 Live Arcade releases have leaked. The database is listing Final Doom and Ultimate Doom as “M” rated titles for the Xbox 360. With Doom standing as one of the few Arcade titles with strong online play, it would seem to make sense to take advantage of all the extra content available from the franchise.

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Two New Ways To Get Halo 3 Beta

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,

Master Chief When Microsoft opened their initial sign-up for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, the form was swamped with gamers hoping to get access online. Now, the company has announced two new ways of getting into the upcoming beta release. First, the company has confirmed that those people buying Crackdown will be able to download the multiplayer beta upon release. Those gamers not willing to pony up the cash to get the game and access will have an alternate method; Microsoft’s “Rule of Three” program. Starting in February, gamers that qualify on Xbox Live and are among the first 13,333 Halo 2 players that register on the official Halo 3 website will also have access to the beta. One would also expect that there will be other promotions in the future to get into the test program as well.

The full press release continues after the jump.

Click to continue reading Two New Ways To Get Halo 3 Beta

Mobile Halo Developer Suing Microsoft

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360,

Halo Mobile Portal Mobile content develop In-Fusio is suing Microsoft over issues regarding a version of Halo for mobile phones. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that the lawsuit alleges that Microsoft is wrongfully attempting to end the partnership between the two companies. According to the report, Microsoft wishes to terminate the agreement based on missed payments by In-Fusio. In-Fusio says that it is withholding payments because of Microsoft’s alleged stonewalling while the mobile developer attempts to get design approval.

This does mark the second high-profile deal that has had problems in the past few months; Microsoft’s Halo movie deal fell apart and now there is trouble with this partnership. Bungie and Microsoft have been very protective of the Halo franchise; it is hard to tell if these problems were due bad matches between the corporations or if if Microsoft is being an overprotective parent. Either way, it does appear that with both of the deals, expectations were not met by any of the participating parties.

Read More | The Seattle Post-Inteligencer

Bungie Releases First Video Documentary For Halo 3

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Trailers, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Marketplace,

This morning, Bungie made the first ViDoc (video documentary) available for Halo 3. The video documentary focuses on the Brutes in the game and runs approximately seven minutes. Bungie is cautioning that the graphics in the documentary are not final, but the feature should give a good idea about where the company is heading with these creatures in the new game. English language Standard and High Definition versions are available on the Xbox Live Marketplace, and the company will be making localized versions and a non-Marketplace version available later. The feature is also currently available on GameVideos.com

Halo 3 Beta Sign-up Active

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Internet, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,

The Halo 3 multiplayer beta sign-up is now active at Halo3.com. As previously noted, the beta is anticipated to start in Spring 2007. Users signing up must be 17 years old or older, have an Xbox 360 console with hard drive, an Xbox Live Gold subscription, and have their Microsoft .NET Passport linked to their active gamertag. Right now, the registration server is incredibly slow, so those signing up may have to be a little patient for the server load to drop a bit.

Update: The Halo 3 teaser trailer is now available for download from Microsoft here.

Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta Sign Up Monday

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, Culture, First Person Shooters, Xbox 360,

Microsoft has just announced that gamers will be able to sign up to participate in the Halo 3 multiplayer beta on Monday, December 4. On that day, people will be able to sign up for the beta by going to www.halo3.com; those gamers selected will get exclusive access to the pre-release code some time around spring of 2007. The sign-up is tied to the debut of a new CGI-rendered trailer for the game set to air on ESPN’s Monday Night Football between 5:50 and 6:20 p.m. PST.

Bungie Drops Halo 3 Details On Halo Anniversary

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Bungie, First Person Shooters, Trailers, Xbox 360, Xbox Live Marketplace,

On the 5th anniversary of the release of the original Halo, Bungie has dropped a few more details about the goings-on in the Halo universe. First, a new Halo 3 commercial will air exclusively on Monday Night Football on December 4th, with availability on the Xbox Live Marketplace to follow. The commercial will be entirely in CG, which may be disappointing to hard-core fans looking for new in-game footage, but Bungie promises that the commercial will be something special nonetheless.

In addition, Bungie is promising exclusive Halo 2 multiplayer map content available on the Xbox 360. The content won’t be free, and also leaves current Xbox Halo 2 players in the cold. Bungie holds out a faint hope that the content may eventually make its way to the original Xbox, but realistically, this stands little chance of happening. A side benefit of the exclusive content, however, is the news that the backwards compatibility team will be looking at fixing some existing issues in Halo 2 on the Xbox 360.

Finally, probably the biggest news will be the availability of a public beta of Halo 3 this Spring. It sounds like right now the beta will be a limited multiplayer test, but should be exciting for those anxiously waiting for the next iteration of the franchise.

Half Life 2: Episode 2 Delayed

Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: First Person Shooters, Internet, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,

Valve Software, talking with Computer And Videogames today, announced that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 would be delayed until Summer of 2007. The new entry in Valve’s experimentation with episodic content was initially supposed to come out before the end of the year, about 6-7 months after the release of episode 1. Now, the game will more than likely hit one year after the first episode. The goals of providing episodic content was to release playable content more frequently with shorter playtimes so that the large development cycles of major releases could be mitigated somewhat. With further delays, this seems to put the advantages of an episodic release cycle at risk. Even with the delays, though, waiting for Valve’s new content generally seems to be worth it.

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