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A T3 screwdriver specially designed for PSP Slim consoles ...

It's hard to imagine anyone being able to bully Google into submission, but according to Venture Beat, that's exactly what Apple did. The report claims Apple encouraged Google not to use multi-touch technology in the Android-based G1 mobile phone, and Google agreed, Venture Beat says citing an un-named Android team member as the source

http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/09/ap...ogle-complied/ ...

n another of its seemingly bi-weekly press events, Rockstar Games invited us round to have a session on GTA IV: The Lost and Damned's multiplayer, which has been expanded with various modes and goodies.

At least six new modes are promised for the expansion, including some that are clear departures from what we've been used to before. Plus there's the obligatory deathmatch, team deathmatch and Free Mode to think about, and the tons of new vehicles, weapons and options not included in the original GTA IV.

Rather than give you the same old two thousand-word run-down, we've split our impressions into an easy seven-point bullet list so you can see exactly what impressed us about our Lost and Damned.

On the blower: The Lost and Damned's expanded multiplayer introduces a

much-demanded feature absent from the first game; an expanded multiplayer mobile phone. Using Niko's trusty cell from the main game players can now find expanded quick match and filtering options, which should at the very least please the fans and make GTA online a bit more accessible.

Road Rash: L&D's bike-only Race mode is about as close as we've been to get to a next-

generation Road Rash. Armed with baseball bats and tightened-up bike handling, up to 16 Lost racers can burn through the usual stream of Liberty City checkpoints to claim the chequered flag.

Swinging your bat left and right (with the X and B buttons for either side) feels useless at first, but once we figured out you can charge up your swings by holding down the respective button, Rockstar staffers were scattered across the road like roadkill pigeons. Nicely optimised, but perhaps a little bland following GTA IV's own umpteen race modes.

San Andreas flashbacks: One of our favourite game mode additions, Own the City,

has two teams of four (The Lost and Angles of Death) battling across Liberty City to take over various territories. It's all very similar to San Andreas own turf feature; once either team has eliminated an area's AI gang members it'll change to their colour, spawning your own tooled-up AI mates in the process. A frantic, city-sprawling turf war ensues with team members gearing up to assault enemy turf, while scrambling back to their own to defend opposing attacks.

Another twist to the scenario is the addition of gang vans, which can be driven around the city to equip computer-controlled gang members with beefier guns. In our experience the AI seemed to be fairly useless whether carrying a giant shotgun or not, but we had a jolly old time doing the delivery rounds in our gun wagon none the less.

Biker bullies: Lone Wolf Biker, another roster addition, has sixteen players competing

to become the Lone Wolf. How do you become the Lone Wolf? By cappin' the player who was previously the Lone Wolf, of course! Like Highlander, there can be only one.

Even with eight combatants the streets quickly turn to absolute carnage as players skid and scramble to plant one in the back of the player with the big arrow above their head. As the convoy screams after the unlucky Wolf, who's tasked with reaching various waypoints across the city for points, it's easy to overpower a corner and go crashing into a bus stop.

We even managed to accidentally ascend into the biggest bike jump we've ever done in GTA IV. Bullets spray from every direction and it's difficult to hold the Wolf title for longer than a minute, but once you manage to break out onto a long straight you can gain a big lead - as the cheeky bugger who got four minutes clear of everyone else discovered.

With eight journalists in a room at Rockstar it was a frantic, swear-word-shouting holler. But on Xbox Live with a bunch of strangers - strangers that are going to deck you and then wheelie off into the horizon at 100mph - we've got out doubts.

Witness Protection: Our favourite new mode of the seven? Witness Protection. This

pits a team of Lost gang members against a second team of N.O.O.S.E. cops, who're tasked with driving an armoured bus full of state's witnesses across town.

On the N.O.O.S.E. team only one player can drive the van and thus, see the destinations to drop of the witnesses. Teamwork is required to make sure cop cars don't smash into each other on sharp corners and drop back to hold off the attacking Lost players as they pursue the massive van.

Once a drop-off destination is reached N.O.O.S.E. players must defend the AI witness as he makes he makes his way inside. In our game this usually resulted in Lost bikers ploughing into the side of cop cars in a desperate suicide mission. Great fun, but spawn points need to be adjusted to make sure the Lost team isn't always miles away.

Chopper Vs. Chopper: Lost and Damned's most unique online mode pits a lowly man on a

bike against a tooled-up attack chopper - and it's an explosive meeting. The biker player must reach various checkpoints across the city to top the scoreboard, all the while watching their back for the noisy death machine raining rockets ...

n another of its seemingly bi-weekly press events, Rockstar Games invited us round to have a session on GTA IV: The Lost and Damned's multiplayer, which has been expanded with various modes and goodies.

At least six new modes are promised for the expansion, including some that are clear departures from what we've been used to before. Plus there's the obligatory deathmatch, team deathmatch and Free Mode to think about, and the tons of new vehicles, weapons and options not included in the original GTA IV.

Rather than give you the same old two thousand-word run-down, we've split our impressions into an easy seven-point bullet list so you can see exactly what impressed us about our Lost and Damned.

On the blower: The Lost and Damned's expanded multiplayer introduces a

much-demanded feature absent from the first game; an expanded multiplayer mobile phone. Using Niko's trusty cell from the main game players can now find expanded quick match and filtering options, which should at the very least please the fans and make GTA online a bit more accessible.

Road Rash: L&D's bike-only Race mode is about as close as we've been to get to a next-

generation Road Rash. Armed with baseball bats and tightened-up bike handling, up to 16 Lost racers can burn through the usual stream of Liberty City checkpoints to claim the chequered flag.

Swinging your bat left and right (with the X and B buttons for either side) feels useless at first, but once we figured out you can charge up your swings by holding down the respective button, Rockstar staffers were scattered across the road like roadkill pigeons. Nicely optimised, but perhaps a little bland following GTA IV's own umpteen race modes.

San Andreas flashbacks: One of our favourite game mode additions, Own the City,

has two teams of four (The Lost and Angles of Death) battling across Liberty City to take over various territories. It's all very similar to San Andreas own turf feature; once either team has eliminated an area's AI gang members it'll change to their colour, spawning your own tooled-up AI mates in the process. A frantic, city-sprawling turf war ensues with team members gearing up to assault enemy turf, while scrambling back to their own to defend opposing attacks.

Another twist to the scenario is the addition of gang vans, which can be driven around the city to equip computer-controlled gang members with beefier guns. In our experience the AI seemed to be fairly useless whether carrying a giant shotgun or not, but we had a jolly old time doing the delivery rounds in our gun wagon none the less.

Biker bullies: Lone Wolf Biker, another roster addition, has sixteen players competing

to become the Lone Wolf. How do you become the Lone Wolf? By cappin' the player who was previously the Lone Wolf, of course! Like Highlander, there can be only one.

Even with eight combatants the streets quickly turn to absolute carnage as players skid and scramble to plant one in the back of the player with the big arrow above their head. As the convoy screams after the unlucky Wolf, who's tasked with reaching various waypoints across the city for points, it's easy to overpower a corner and go crashing into a bus stop.

We even managed to accidentally ascend into the biggest bike jump we've ever done in GTA IV. Bullets spray from every direction and it's difficult to hold the Wolf title for longer than a minute, but once you manage to break out onto a long straight you can gain a big lead - as the cheeky bugger who got four minutes clear of everyone else discovered.

With eight journalists in a room at Rockstar it was a frantic, swear-word-shouting holler. But on Xbox Live with a bunch of strangers - strangers that are going to deck you and then wheelie off into the horizon at 100mph - we've got out doubts.

Witness Protection: Our favourite new mode of the seven? Witness Protection. This

pits a team of Lost gang members against a second team of N.O.O.S.E. cops, who're tasked with driving an armoured bus full of state's witnesses across town.

On the N.O.O.S.E. team only one player can drive the van and thus, see the destinations to drop of the witnesses. Teamwork is required to make sure cop cars don't smash into each other on sharp corners and drop back to hold off the attacking Lost players as they pursue the massive van.

Once a drop-off destination is reached N.O.O.S.E. players must defend the AI witness as he makes he makes his way inside. In our game this usually resulted in Lost bikers ploughing into the side of cop cars in a desperate suicide mission. Great fun, but spawn points need to be adjusted to make sure the Lost team isn't always miles away.

Chopper Vs. Chopper: Lost and Damned's most unique online mode pits a lowly man on a

bike against a tooled-up attack chopper - and it's an explosive meeting. The biker player must reach various checkpoints across the city to top the scoreboard, all the while watching their back for the noisy death machine raining rockets ...

The Rock Band franchise has sold millions, but according to MTV Games parent Viacom, the series fell short of expectations for the fourth quarter ended in December.

Viacom CFO Tom Dooley said in a Thursday earnings call that Rock Band 2 sold nearly 2 million units ("hardware, software and bundles") since its debut in September 2008 across all platforms.

But a challenging retail environment kept sales of the sequel below Viacom's projections, Dooley said.

"While we remain enthusiastic about the future franchise potential for Rock Band, the impact of a slowing economy dampened consumer purchases of videogames in the quarter, resulting in lower sales of Rock Band than we had originally hoped."

Viacom also said that the Rock Band franchise has shipped over 10 million units since its November 2007 debut, and ranked "as the #1 game title of 2008 by revenue across all genres" worldwide in 2008.

Dooley also said Rock Band 2 sales drove international ancillary revenues, which were flat at $462 million. The sequel also partially offset an 8 percent decline in domestic ancillary revenues.

MTV Games-owned Rock Band developer Harmonix is currently developing a Beatles-licensed music game.

Overall, Viacom reported a 69 percent year-on-year drop in net earnings to $173 million for Q4, due to $454 million in restructuring charges. Quarterly revenues were $4.2 billion, or flat year-on-year.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/rock...pped-worldwide ...

You can probably guess the most and least profitable platforms for a company like Activision Blizzard, but seeing the hard numbers really puts it in perspective; the Wii accounted for 15% their total profits in 2008, while PSP only made up 1%.
***
“World of Warcraft” might be bringing in the largest profits for Activision Blizzard, but ignoring that, the Wii was the most profitable platform for the publisher in 2008, accounting for 15% of their total profits this year.
For comparison, the profit breakdown for the other platforms were:
Wii (15%)
Xbox 360 (13%)
PlayStation 2 (13%)
PlayStation 3 (9%)
PC (4%)
DS (7%)
PSP (1%)
The rest of the 100% is, obviously, made up of “World of Warcraft” money.
The uphill battle PSP faces even with the most profitable company in video games is apparent. Sony has told us several times that 2009 will be a comeback year for the platform, but what part of that come from Activision Blizzard, if any?
What do you want to see Activision Blizzard do on Wii? What about PSP?

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/...sion-blizzard/ ...

A European Union report has concluded that videogames can have beneficial effects on children, encouraging creativity and co-operation.

The study by the European Parliament Committee, which runs counter to the hysteria usually associated with the violent reputation of many titles, found a number of benefits and no definitive link to violent behaviour.

"Videogames are in most cases not dangerous and can even contribute to the development of important skills," said Toine Manders, who drafted the report, according to Reuters.

"(They stimulate) learning of facts and skills such as strategic reflection, creativity, cooperation and a sense of innovation,"

Furthermore, the report urged member states of the EU to adopt the Pegi rating system rather than suggesting any further restrictions on games.

In the UK, the industry regulated content ratings system has come under pressure from the government backed BBFC following the release of the Byron report.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...l-for-children ...

The European Parliament has actually requested that red, panic-style buttons be set up for use by parents whose children play online games. The buttons would allow the parents to quickly shut the game down should something inappropriate occur. Wouldn't the old-school on-off switch work just as well?"
To be fair, the report isn't entirely crazy; it says games "can also be used for educational and medical purposes," and acknowledges that the "presence of violence in video games does not automatically lead to violent behaviour.

http://games.slashdot.org/games/09/02/12/0641203.shtml ...

Well, this was probably bound to happen. A fitness "expert" named Michael Torchia says he's now preparing a class-action suit against NIntendo which will apparently seek to remove its Wii Fit from the shelves unless they add warnings to the product. The offense? Torchia claims that the Wii Fit actually contributes to obesity, essentially because it claims to be something that it's really not -- namely, a fitness tool -- and discourages people from doing more traditional exercise. He also, however, seems to be concerned that the Wii Fit is dangerous -- mostly because it doesn't stress warming up enough, and users can do the exercises wrong, straining or injuring themselves. Now, we're not going to delve into the validity of his claims (though, how do you explain this dude? Just saying), but we should note that Torchia is apparently getting ready to launch his airwave-rocking AM radio show, "Shape Up, America," and we figure he's looking to drum up some buzz for himself, so we'll be watching to see if he ever actually brings his suit against old Mario and Sons. Step on.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/12/f...on-suit-radio/ ...