The new Silver Xbox 360 controller will be available in the UK from 4th March, priced at £44.99.

According to Gamerzines, that price includes a Play & Charge add-on.

The new wireless controller, revealed last August, offers a "transformative" D-pad for more accurate control that rotates into either a standard 'plus' shape or a disc depending on your preference. It also tweaks the thumbstick, giving it a new concave top, and adds a grey tone finish to the A/B/X/Y buttons.

The new controller is already out in the US, with an RRP of $64.99, which converts to about £41.

The standard wireless controller currently sells for around £30, depending on where you shop.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...r-dated-priced ...

EA's inclusion of the Taliban as a playable faction in the multiplayer portion of last year's Afghanistan shooter Medal of Honor turned enough heads to force it to scrap the idea at the 11th hour, but for THQ core games boss Danny Bilson, the Taliban should never have even been considered.

"I wouldn't have put them in in the first place," Bilson told Eurogamer in New York this week. "I wouldn't have."

THQ's soon-to-be-released shooter Homefront depicts a 'what if?' scenario in which the US is invaded by Korea.

Bilson describes the game as "speculative fiction", but following the recent escalation of the real world conflict between North Korea and South Korea, some have suggested that Homefront is bad taste.

Bilson denied the accusation, pointing out the difference between Medal of Honor and Homefront.

"In Battlefield, when you had the Mid East Alliance and the Chinese and the Americans, it was all fantasy and I didn't mind playing one side or the other.

"When you get into reality – and that's real, that's not speculative science-fiction like ours – people are dying at their hands. I take my games seriously. That's why they're fun to play, because you care about them. I don't want to play as the Taliban, particularly."

Last year DICE, the studio behind the multiplayer portion of MOH, told Eurogamer its reviews were hurt by the controversy surrounding the game's setting. Bilson, however, is confident Homefront will not suffer a similar fate.

"If we [the US] were in a shooting war with them [North Korea] and people's children were dying at their hands, you'd have to watch a bit what you do, as Medal of Honor ran into a little bit in Afghanistan.

"I'm old school. No offence, but I don't like playing as the Germans in World War II, either. That's just me. I just don't, because I take my games seriously and I have my heroes and villains in my psyche.

"Germans don't want to see the swastika, not for one second. I immerse myself in a game and care. Also, I'm older. I grew up with World War II as a big part of reality for my parents and my grandparents. For a younger generation, it's just a strategy game, like with board games or RTS. It's interesting.

"I'm not as sensitive as I was when I was younger but it's emotional and it's personal.

"I lost some relatives in World War II, so I always have that somewhere in my mind - some relatives in Poland. The next guy goes, oh, I don't relate it to that. It's a videogame.

"It's all personal. I'm not speaking for THQ. I'm just speaking for my experience and me."

Bilson, who used to work on the Medal of Honor series while at EA, added: "I had a lot of friends and family members who worked on that Medal of Honor game. They worked really hard to create an incredibly respectful experience of the American soldier. But we don't have to worry about respecting the Taliban. We don't because there are a lot of issues we have with them socially and politically.

"But I'm not sitting in Afghanistan having feelings of being... whatever they feel, in the tribal areas.

"It's very tricky stuff. When you deal with real-world stuff, you have to be sensitive to all points of view - absolutely not just an American point of view. I don't think Homefront's an American point of view at all.

"I'm not here to do politics. I'm not here to make a political statement. We're making entertainment. But we don't want to offend. We really don't, because if people are dying in the real world that becomes sensitive.

"When it's up to me, I'll make certain sensitive choices in all of these things."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...taliban-in-moh ...

Goomba is a Gameboy emulator for the Gameboy Advance. Beyond the advantage of being able to store many games on one cart, Goomba also includes save states and customizable borders. At least, my fork does. Also available are many palettes, along with the ability to make your own.

The process to actually included custom borders can be quite complex, so I've created a tutorial which should help guide you through the process. Currently this project is somewhat ongoing. The most probable future release would include a cheat finder of some nature. But, it will probably be a while before any attempts to add this are made.

2011-01-10 - Support GBC preset palettes. Renamed the included GBC palettes.

http://kuwanger.net/gba/goomba/ ...

News via http://boards.dingoonity.org/dingoon...ink-v1-0-2933/

Here we have a nice little puzzle game.

Quote
Hello everyone,

Here's my first project for the Dingoo (Dingux): Slitherlink v1.0.


Download and release notes

• Introduction

Slitherlink is a logic puzzle game created in 1989 by Japanese publisher Nikoli, famous for creating Sudoku, among many other logic puzzles.
I discovered the game a few years ago on the Nintendo DS with 'Puzzle Series Vol. 5: Slitherlink', which was never released outside of Japan. It's such a good game I became addicted to it, and now it's time to spread the virus

This is my version of the game for Dingux (Dingoo Linux).
Its main features are:

• 456 levels
• Four grid sizes: 5x5 (easy), 7x7, 10x10, 20x20 (hard)
• Undo button
• Progress saved automatically
• Save state option


• Rules

In Slitherlink, you draw lines on a grid to create a meandering path, following the rules:

• The path must form a single loop, without crossing itself or branching.
• The numbers indicate how many lines surround each cell. Empty cells may be surrounded by any number of lines.

There is one unique solution for each level.
You can draw small x's on segments that cannot be connected.
You should be able to find the solution by logical deduction only, without guessing.

To Slitherlink beginners, I strongly advise to consult the Wikipedia page, and particularly the chapter 'Solution methods', which is a big help at the beginning.

Download: http://beyondds.free.fr/projects/Sli...nk_v1.0.tar.gz ...

Not all 3DS games will have to make use of the device's 3D capabilities, Nintendo has revealed.

Answering a question from Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi in a new Iwata Asks interview as to whether the handheld will be compatible with DS cartridges, Nintendo guru Shigeru Miyamoto explained, "It's compatible with software for previous Nintendo DS systems, which will be viewed in the 2D mode.

"New game cards, however, will be specific to Nintendo 3DS, but whether they will be in 3D or not is basically up to the maker, just like how much to use the touchscreen was up to developers for Nintendo DS."

The Mario creator went on to explain that he thought it was too much to expect all developers to immediately start developing in 3D.

"Suddenly requesting all the game developers to only make 3D games on game cards exclusive to the Nintendo 3DS from now on would really raise the hurdle for them.

"We thought it would be better for developers, as well as players, if they could do as they please depending on the software, having images jump out just a little or making games based significantly on 3D."

Nintendo's new handheld is expected to launch in Europe and the US in March, with an official release date to be announced on 19th January at a showcase event in Amsterdam.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...-will-be-in-3d ...

Any good army isn't just staffed with believers of the cause. The easily-persuaded friends of those believers make up a crucial portion of every respectable army on the planet -- just ask Cobra Commander. That dude knows how to grease the wheels.

Microsoft understands this and has accordingly launched a "Refer-a-Friend" program of its own for Xbox Live, sans elaborate turkey dinner banquets. Referring friends (by Gamertag), can net existing Gold members tokens, which can be used to redeem one of four rewards, according to the promotion's "Official Rules":
Get your free member friend to go Gold and (1) you and your friend will each get 400 Microsoft Points* or (2) 600 Microsoft Points*, depending on the active offer.
Get your free member friend to go Gold and (3) you and your friend will get a multiplayer Xbox Live Arcade game of Microsoft's choosing.
Get your free member friend to try Gold with a promotional token good for 1 month of Gold, and (4) if your friend redeems the token within 30 days, you'll get 200 Microsoft Points*.
Recruiters (that's you!) can refer up to five friends per day, until the promotion's scheduled end date on July 1. Each recruiter is eligible to receive all four of the offers once during that time. Any funny business ("using multiple/different email addresses, Xbox Live accounts, identities, registrations and logins," etc.), Microsoft notes, will be grounds for disqualification -- but you won't be discharged from Xbox Live!

*Fine print: "Tokens to download points will expire on December 31, 2011. Once downloaded, promotional points will expire on June 30, 2012."

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/13/xb...ogram-is-live/ ...

In the latest excerpt from Nintendo's "Iwata Asks" interview about the 3DS, Shigeru Miyamoto excitedly revealed that "Iwata-san also wants to include 3D video in the future!" Iwata tempered that exclamation by saying, "I think it will be fun if we're able to include video recording capabilities with future updates." Clearly, that's no guarantee that such a feature will be added to the handheld's 3D camera functionality, but if Iwata thinks it would be fun, then don't be surprised if you find yourself shooting low-res 3D video with your 3DS at some point in the future!

Later in the interview, Hideki Konno joined the group and discussed the StreetPass feature in Nintendogs + Cats. "When you're using StreetPass and exchange data with someone, in walk mode, that person's Mii is walking whatever puppy he or she has chosen," Konno explained. "Then your Miis and puppies talk and exchange gifts." The feature is designed to imitate the random meetings of people walking their dogs on the street ... without having to actually meet random people walking their dogs on the street.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/13/ni...pdate-for-3ds/ ...

More court documents have surfaced in the suit between Sony and PS3 hackers, mostly declarations on the part of each of Sony's lawyers in support of the restraining order against George "GeoHot" Hotz and other hackers. One document contains over 280 pages of "evidence" to provide cause for enjoining them against further hacking -- said evidence consisting of full, copy-and-pasted pages from Twitter accounts, forum posts, and news stories relating to the recent discoveries of the PS3's private and root keys.

Also included are summons for the hackers, and a document from Sony declining to bring the case before a magistrate judge, requesting a district judge instead. According to PSX-Scene, there's also evidence that Sony sent $1 to Hotz's PayPal account through his email address, in order to prove he is accepting donations, even though he hadn't actually requested donations.

NeoGAF's Sangreal also obtained responses from the lawyers representing Hotz. The opposition statement claims that the California court has no jurisdiction over Hotz or any of the other defendants, and that Hotz has no connection to the other hackers.

More substantially, Hotz's attorneys' statement asserts that "Defendant Hotz has not produced, manufactured, sold, nor does he have any intent whatsoever to produce, manufacture, or sell, any devices that facilitate piracy." It dismisses Sony's use of other piracy cases for precedent, because those cases involve hardware used to circumvent the PS3's protection, and not software. Moreover, the statement makes the point that enjoining Hotz from his programming activities won't do anything. "Sony's own pleadings admit that the code necessary to jailbreak the Sony PlayStation computer is on the internet," the statement reads. "Sony speaks of 'closing the door', but the simple fact is that there is no door to close. The code sought to be restrained will always be a Google search away."

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/01/13/so...geohots-lawye/ ...

Do you want this Game Boy-themed iPhone 4 case? Well, how does it feel to want? Not all that hot from where we're sitting, that's for damn sure. Spotted at Incipio's CES booth, the company put the case together to demo the company's production capabilities. Sadly, for us, the thing won't be coming to market at any time in the near future (unless someone in Shenzhen decides to take on the cause, that is). We must say, this is a big improvement over the company's iPod nano watch bands -- and an immense improvement over the guy who shoved an HTC Aria inside his old Game Boy (throwing in a fake iPhone 4 for good measure).

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/12/i...d-no-you-cant/ ...