DCEmu Featured News Articles

A number of Xbox 360 owners have reported suffering console failures shortly after buying Kinect.

According to the BBC, users are blaming the motion sensing peripheral for new instances of the dreaded red ring of death - although the possibility that their systems could have red ringed anyway obviously looms large.


"We plugged it [Kinect] in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights," Adam Winnifrith told BBC Radio 4's You and Yours.

"The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven't been able to use it since."

Online gaming forums are carrying similar stories.

"I have never had a single issue with my Xbox," one poster wrote. "i got Kinect for Christmas and the screen starting freezing randomly. Then on New Year's eve... BAM I got the red ring. Very sad."

Another read: "Yep, I got the Red rings of death on Christmas day The very same day my kids got a Kinect."

Responding to the report, Microsoft denied any link between Kinect and Xbox 360 failures.

"There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect," the firm said in a statement. "Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental."

Microsoft claimed last month that its 2011 will "ultimately be all about Kinect" - as the device spearheads a "brilliant" line-up on 360.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Sony has detailed the next PlayStation Plus update - and apologised for one title not making the cut.

Due to some unspecified "last minute problems", Colony Wars didn't make the cut for the period from January 5 to February 2. Sony apologised over on the PS Blog.

Cheer up, however, because there are plenty more goodies where that came from - including a free trial of the full game of Borderlands.

The full list reads:

PSN:

*Shatter

*Samurai Showdown (continues from the end of December)


PS Minis:

* Pipe Madness (two weeks earlier than expected, exclusively for Plus)

* Kahoots

PSOne Classic:

* G- Police

Full Game Trial:

*Borderlands (also includes a full game and DLC bundle if you purchase after the trial - available for two weeks only)

Exclusive Discounts:

* PlayTV Live Chat (25 percent discount) - valid until 6th July 2011

* Breath of Fire (PSP) - 40%

* Dark Stalkers' Chronicles (PSP) - 40%

* Megaman Maveric Hunter (PSP) - 40%

* Monster Hunter Freedom Unite (PSP) - 20%

* Fate Unlimited (PSP) - 60%

* PowerStone Collection (PSP) - 40%

* Capcom Classics Reloaded (PSP) - 40%

* Capcom Classics Remixed (PSP) - 50%

* Capcom Puzzle World (PSP) - 40%

* Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP) - 20%

* Battlefield 1943 - 40% (until Jan 18th)

* Costume Quest and DLC Bundle - 20% (from 19th Jan)

* Modern Combat Domination - 25% day one discount (coming mid Jan)

Dynamic Themes:

* Exclusive Fire Theme

* Exclusive 'Year of the Rabbit' Theme

Premium Avatars:

* Eat Them avatars

* Super Street Fighter 4 exclusive bundle (all avatars released to date for €4.99)

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...VG-General-RSS ...

Capcom has shipped four million units of PSP title Monster Hunter Freedom 3 over its first month on sale, and purely within Japan.

The publisher claims this makes the game the PSP's fastest selling title ever, though has yet to reveal what proportion of shipped titles extrapolated to sales.

Capcom nonetheless claimed that Freedom 3 takes Monster Hunter series total sales to 17 million. It also projects that the game is on course to be Japan's best-selling title for the 2010 financial year.

Monster Hunter Freedom 3 was released in Japan on December 1, and will arrive in Western territories later this year.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...in-psp-history ...

EA has outlined plans to turn off online support for a raft of its games over the next few months.

The cull begins on 11th January, when EA will shut down the online service for The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II for Xbox 360 and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king for Xbox 360.

"Our licensing deal with Middle-earth Enterprises has expired, forcing us to shutdown the online services for The Lord of the Rings games," EA wrote on its website.

"We hope you have enjoyed playing these games online and appreciate your patronage. There's still time for one last epic tower rush!"

Next in-line for the virtual chop is The Sims Carnival, which will not be available from www.simscarnival.com after 16th January.

Then, on 8th February, a raft of EA Sports titles will have their online service terminated, including FIFA 07 for Xbox 360, EA Sports FIFA Manager 10 for PC, FIFA 09 Ultimate Team for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Explaining the decision, EA said, "As background information, the EA Sports games scheduled for shutdown in February and March 2011 represent roughly one per cent of all peak online players across all EA titles.

"Despite some people's perception, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work involved with keeping these older games up and running. We would rather our hard-working engineering and IT staff focus on keeping a positive experience for the other 99 per cent of customers playing our more popular games.

"These decisions to retire games is never easy. The development teams and operational staff pour their hearts into these games almost as much as the customers playing them and it is hard to see one retired. We hope you have gotten many hours of enjoyment out of the games and we appreciate your ongoing patronage."

Sniff.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...s-of-its-games ...

Silver-haired EA overlord John Riccitiello finds it "really hard to imagine" a future where he's "hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger" and shooting baddies in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.

"I've had a number of people ask me, 'Will gesture-based gaming replace controllers?'" Riccitiello told IndustryGamers.

"I don't think so.

"There will be genres where the gesture-based gaming, however delivered (Kinect, Move or any other device that comes down the road), will actually be the superior way to play: dance games, music games, exercise games. It's really hard to imagine [playing] an exercise game with your thumbs.

And, he added: "It's really hard to imagine that I'm going to play a future edition of Medal of Honor, or Call of Duty, or Battlefield, hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger. I've tried driving with gesture-based controls; I don't really like it."

But he reckons sports games could successfully incorporate gesture controls for scrolling through menus, picking teams or "calling plays" - "that's very possible".

"The more interesting thing for Kinect and Move," he went on to say, "is going to be what happens late next year in terms of how we see them, and then what new genres sprout up to support those control systems.

"I mean, if it weren't for plastic guitars, the music sector never would have happened. In the same sort of way, what's going to trigger the hot game? What's going to use Kinect in just that way?"

Riccitiello also questions how "long lived" the popularity of Kinect and Move will be, and draws on his family's past experience with Wii as evidence. There was a console that typically housed a single game, whereas PS3 and Xbox 360 had "three or four games going at any given time". The latter were longer-play experiences, too, eating up multiple hours, compared to the short-play thrills of Wii.

Kinect and Move were both released towards the end of 2010. Analysts predict sales numbers are "neck and neck" despite the first-glance disparity between Sony's 4.1 million shipped Move tally and Microsoft's 2.5 million actual sales of Kinect.

All analysts agree with Riccitiello, however, that 2011 will be a pivotal year for Kinect and Move. Will they sink as novelties or swim as Wii-style successes? And how will Nintendo counter that?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ard-to-imagine ...

Silver-haired EA overlord John Riccitiello finds it "really hard to imagine" a future where he's "hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger" and shooting baddies in Call of Duty or Medal of Honor.

"I've had a number of people ask me, 'Will gesture-based gaming replace controllers?'" Riccitiello told IndustryGamers.

"I don't think so.

"There will be genres where the gesture-based gaming, however delivered (Kinect, Move or any other device that comes down the road), will actually be the superior way to play: dance games, music games, exercise games. It's really hard to imagine [playing] an exercise game with your thumbs.

And, he added: "It's really hard to imagine that I'm going to play a future edition of Medal of Honor, or Call of Duty, or Battlefield, hiding behind my couch, making a gun out of my finger. I've tried driving with gesture-based controls; I don't really like it."

But he reckons sports games could successfully incorporate gesture controls for scrolling through menus, picking teams or "calling plays" - "that's very possible".

"The more interesting thing for Kinect and Move," he went on to say, "is going to be what happens late next year in terms of how we see them, and then what new genres sprout up to support those control systems.

"I mean, if it weren't for plastic guitars, the music sector never would have happened. In the same sort of way, what's going to trigger the hot game? What's going to use Kinect in just that way?"

Riccitiello also questions how "long lived" the popularity of Kinect and Move will be, and draws on his family's past experience with Wii as evidence. There was a console that typically housed a single game, whereas PS3 and Xbox 360 had "three or four games going at any given time". The latter were longer-play experiences, too, eating up multiple hours, compared to the short-play thrills of Wii.

Kinect and Move were both released towards the end of 2010. Analysts predict sales numbers are "neck and neck" despite the first-glance disparity between Sony's 4.1 million shipped Move tally and Microsoft's 2.5 million actual sales of Kinect.

All analysts agree with Riccitiello, however, that 2011 will be a pivotal year for Kinect and Move. Will they sink as novelties or swim as Wii-style successes? And how will Nintendo counter that?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...ard-to-imagine ...

The very first modified firmware for retail PlayStation 3 consoles has been released, allowing any PS3 owner to install their own programs onto the XMB.

Open source developer Youness Alaoumi (hacker alias: KaKaRoToKS) released the first proof of concept last night. The release takes the form of a script that adapts the existing Sony releases of official firmware (3.41 and 3.55 definitely work), modifies them, and then re-packs them ready for installation on any PS3.

Alaoumi himself doesn't call this a custom firmware, more a "modified" one. It is a simple adjustment to an .xml file within the firmware updater that adds an "Install PKG" option to the XMB options - PKGs are the containers used by Sony for patches and PSN downloads. PSJailbreak added the same option but there are a number of differences: firstly, the new firmware mod doesn't allow for the installation of unsigned, unencrypted code in the way that the Jailbreak did.

Secondly, the hooks and patches added to the PS3's GameOS, which re-routed hard drive traffic through the Blu-ray channels, have also not been included. This means that the existing tools for piracy - and indeed "backup" software - do not work. Adding support for these to a modified firmware is not trivial - proper reverse-engineering is required here, as opposed to adjusting the base .xml, and none of the established hackers will support such a release.

The notion of extracting, adjusting and re-packing official firmwares isn't new - it's thought that PSJailbreak did something similar with its downgrader, while Geohot demonstrated his own custom firmware a while back that retained OtherOS support - however, this was never released, leading some to believe it was a fake.

There has been a range of homebrew titles released for the PS3 in the wake of PSJailbreak. DOOM, Heretic and Hexen have been ported across and a number of emulators have been released. In addition, a few genuine, original hand-written games have also surfaced. These will not work on the new firmware without being signed and encrypted using the keys unearthed by Fail0verflow's work, but it is just a matter of time before this happens.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/di...are-blog-entry ...

Newly released/updated for the Wiz

The island of Malis is in grave danger! The infamous Beast King and his army of monsters try to invade the peaceful homeland of the blobs, in order to reign the whole island. Those small, kind creatures are to be enslaved and most of them are unable to oppose their tormentors. However if YOU take the role of Blob, one will rise to defend their freedom.The games sourcecode licence is gpl, all the content is cc-by-nc-ndseehttp://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.htmlandhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/for details

More... ...

The moment we have ALL been waiting for! KaKaRoTo, famous for his work on the PL3 payload, has released a tool that converts a standard Sony retail firmware files, into a custom firmware. The custom firmware allows the installation of homebrew files (via package install), without the need for a jailbreak.

NOTE: This does not appear to have the necessary patches in place, that are necessary for playing backups. However, that is a very trivial matter, considering the grand spectrum of what KaKaRoTo has achieved. And yes, you still have PSN access if you have 3.55CFW installed.


Because of LEGAL and COPYRIGHT issues the compiled download version will not be provided, but you can grab the required files via GitHub below.

Via KaKaRoTo's blog:

You can install 3.55CFW over 3.55OFW and this video shows proof you can install 3.55CFW while on 3.55OFW, it also shows the installation of a retail PKG using the custom install package option.


KaKaRoTo's Git: https://github.com/kakaroto/ps3utils

Source: PSGroove ...