Food palaces Sainsbury's and Morrisons are the cheapest places to buy Modern Warfare 2.

The PS3 or Xbox 360 game can be yours for just £26. Well, in theory, as it's currently out of stock in Sainsbury's.

Your next best bet is either Tesco or Amazon.co.uk, where the console versions cost £32 and the PC version around 30 quid.

Failing that, then GAME and ShopTo are selling Modern Warfare 2 for £42.99/£34.99.

After those you're left with the pack: ASDA, Argos, Gamestation, Play.com, HMV, where the game sells for £44.99/£34.99.

Alternatively, you could try eBay, which is littered with dirt-cheap listings awaiting bidders.

Local store prices may differ. Please let us know if they do, as we love a bit of gossip-slash-news.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/sa...eapest-for-mw2 ...

BBC reporter Marc Cieslak has told Radio 4 that he was "saddened" after playing Modern Warfare 2 as it disproved his belief that the games industry had "grown up".

Host Justin Webb lead the discussion on Modern Warfare 2, which was introduced as "not just any videogame", before a soundbite of the infamous airport scene - in which players are asked to shoot unarmed civilians - was played (filmed in HD for Eurogamer TV - spoilers within).

"Oh not at all," responded Cieslak when asked if he'd been "damaged" by Modern Warfare 2. "I've played an awful lot of games and watched an awful lot of movies.

"I wasn't shocked by it but I felt a little bit saddened. I thought the games industry had moved beyond shock tactics for shock tactics sake And that's what I thought about this level: it's controversial for the sake of being controversial. I didn't think it necessarily needed to be included in the game."

Cieslak said he found it "unusual" that "it didn't occur to [Activision]" that Modern Warfare 2 might cause this level of controversy when the company was making the game. Justin Webb quipped that "perhaps it did".

Modern Warfare 2 goes on general release today.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/mw...the-sake-of-it ...

UK retail giant HMV is expecting Activision's newly-released first-person shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, to become the fastest-selling game in UK history and predicts that it will sell over 1 million copies in its first week on sale.

The entertainment chain, which opened 140 stores at midnight last night to sell the game, believes that the Infinity Ward-developed game will eclipse the 800,000 week one sales record set by Grand Theft Auto IV last year.

"Modern Warfare 2 raises the bar for all games, not only for the astonishing demand we are seeing from gamers all around the country, but for its technical brilliance also," said HMV's Gennaro Castaldo. "With more than a million unit sales likely in its first week alone, HMV confidently predicts it will go on to become the biggest-selling title ever in games history."

The game has seen huge online pre-orders, the company said, while discounting at some supermarkets have resulted in a large number of them sell out, with Activision working now to re-stock.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...dern-warfare-2 ...

EA's CEO John Riccitiello has noted his frustration at the low sales of Wii software, and suggested Nintendo needs to release more first-party titles in order to generate interest in the format.

Speaking during a call to investors last night, he admitted sales on the Wii were poorer than expected – despite his belief that EA is releasing the best third-party content on the console.

"To be honest with you, I think the Wii platform has been a little weaker than we had certainly anticipated. And there is no lack of frustration to be doing that at precisely the time where we have the strongest third-party share," Riccitiello told investors.

"Frankly, I think they need more beats in the year than they get out of a first-party slate – to be able to have the Wii software platform perform as well as they would like. We are building the products that I think the most highly rated on the platform and at this point in time, generating the most revenue of any third-party platform."

Nintendo needs to partner with third-parties at retail, said Riccitiello, to help both achieve success on a format suffering slower sales than last year.

"I think driving revenues up on that platform from where we already are, which is up substantially from where we were a year ago, we are reaching out to Nintendo to find ways to partner to push third-party software harder.

"Wii is where we are missing it and so I really do think that the opportunity exists to find different ways to partner with first party in this case to sort of help establish in the minds of the consumer legitimacy of some of these other brands when they are going out multiplatform because very, very few multiplatform titles are succeeding on the Wii."

However, Riccitiello did mention that he does not expect third-parties to achieve any success in Asian markets on the Wii, and reaching the installed base of over 50 million consoles would not be realistic.

"I would point out, by the way, the 50 million number of course includes Asia or Japan and I don’t think any of the Western companies are likely to participate much at all on the Wii platform in Japan, so the addressable market we see is just a little bit below 40 million but that is still an important opportunity."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...of-wii-success ...

The latest survey of TIGA members, discussing the issue of piracy in the UK, has revealed that while the vast majority of those questioned believe that the subject is a problem for their businesses - and one that is getting worse - most don't consider it to be an actual threat to the survival of their businesses.

In total 60 per cent surveyed agreed that it was an issue, while 90 per cent believed it was an increasing problem - but 60 per cent felt it was a low threat to the viability of their company, while just 10 per cent felt it was a significant threat.

Additionally, feelings were mixed on whether or not the government should take direct action on pirates by cutting or slowing broadband, with a 50/50 split on the matter.

"The results of the TIGA piracy survey clearly demonstrate that UK developers are taking the initiative when dealing with the issue of piracy and looking for new ways of delivering content and communicating directly with their consumers," said Richard Wilson, CEO of the organisation.

"Developers are not complacent in dealing with this problem and are mostly seeking to find solutions for themselves rather than simply relying on the government to solve the problem of piracy. This is testament to the pragmatic approach of the industry."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...at-to-survival ...

Electronic Arts' John Schappert has said that FIFA 10 is outselling rival Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 by 4-to-1.

Speaking during a conference call to investors last night, the EA executive team also confidently predicted that its Battlefield franchise can take on Activision's Call of Duty, and that UK studio Criterion is currently developing a new Need for Speed title for 2010.

Comparing sales of its market-leading football franchise, Schappert said that "the sell through at retail in Europe is 31 per cent ahead of last year’s FIFA 09 on a comparable period basis and we are outselling Pro Evolution Soccer 4 to 1."

EA Games label president Frank Gibeau said that the publisher was successfully revitalising its blockbusters, pointing to 2.5 million sales of the recently-released Need for Speed: Shift as evidence of improved quality.

"In recent years, we failed to put adequate resources behind this franchise and as a result, quality suffered. I’m happy to say we fixed that," offered Gibeau. "This year’s game, Need for Speed Shift, launched six weeks earlier and posted a quality rating 22 points higher. We have already shipped 2.5 million units in the quarter. In September, it was the number one title in Europe and in the top ten in North America."

He also revealed that "next year’s Need For Speed has been under development now for some time at our award-winning Criterion Studio," the team behind the successful Burnout franchise.

With the release of Dragon Age: Origins, EA was getting a foothold in the RPG market, said Gibeau, and there are plans to breathe new life into older IP.

"In the months ahead, you will hear more about our plans to revitalise core IP, including the Medal of Honor franchise," he said.

"DICE will release Battlefield Bad Company 2... we believe this will put Battlefield in head to head competition with Call of Duty for quality and online game play."

Schappert also added that after a slow start, sales of the latest Madden release were up. "We sold 3.9 million copies in the [second] quarter. After a disappointing August that had Madden down 19per cent, sell through in September grew 8 per cent year-over-year, with more than 60 per cent growth on the PS3 according to NPD.

"Madden sales are now up 5 per cent year-over-year on the Xbox 360 and PS3 combined".

Electronic Arts announced yesterday that it plans to streamline its product portfolio going forward, and cut 1500 jobs across the business.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-pes-by-4-to-1 ...

Activision's much-anticipated shooter, Modern Warfare 2, has launched in the UK following a premiere in London's Leicester Square.

The event, hosted by Vernon Kaye, took place in the Vue Cinema - a location normally reserved for the opening night of Hollywood blockbusters.

Afterwards, while a handful of people queued at nearby HMV, the publisher hosted an industry bash on Baker Street, with Dizzee Rascal taking to the stage after the countdown to midnight had passed.

The game's launch period has been beset by controversy, with some elements of the UK mainstream press focusing on one scene featuring terrorists at an airport and civilian fatalities, while a selection of retailers broke street dates to sell the game ahead of its official release.

The game is expected to be the biggest-selling title of 2009, with several other publishers pushing releases back from the traditional pre-Christmas hotspot to avoid competing with it.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...quare-premiere ...

News via http://www.xbox-scene.com/

After the release of the hack for Xenon, Falcon/Opus and Zephyr motherboards, today we get the Free60 JTAG/SMC XeLL Hack for Jasper (v4) motherboards with 16mb NAND chips (so NOT compatible with 256 & 512mb NAND yet)!
This NAND image will boot your Jasper Xbox360 right into XeLL, which allows you to launch linux distros or run libxenon homebrew software, as long as you never upgraded it via the normal MS upgrade procedures to kernel 849x or higher.

From the readme/nfo:
[QUOTE]
Finally the Jasper JTAG Hack is here
This is XELL (compiled 11.09.09) inserted into 6712 Jasper-Kernel.

Don't wonder about the Filesize, its correct like that. It just flashes the beginning of the NAND so your console specific data like MAC adress will stay.

Of course you should have a working backup of your NAND before you proceed.

*** NOTE ***
Only work with 16mb version, a fix may come out. ...

News via pspita

Jpcsp yet another update for the PSP emulator for PC sviulppato in Java homonymous team. With this release the program, which requires for proper operation of the installation of Java on your PC, comes to the revision 1246. I remember Jpcsp allows the execution of some homebrew like those already in the archive.
More to follow.

Changelog:

Quote:

Rev1246: First draft of GE viewport interpretation. Not yet fully functional: this feature has to be enabled in VideoEngine.useViewport to not break current games. Code review is welcome!
Rev1245: Allow the configuration of the normal values in 3D Studio.
Rev1244: Fixed lighting for directional light (no spot exponent and cutoff).
Rev1243: Add more randomness to Texture hashCode for TextureCache (was causing problems when switching textures in 3D Studio)
Rev1242: Lighting was not always completely disabled in 2D (spotted by tests of BlackDaemon using 3D Studio)
Rev1241: Refactoring of sceKernelLoadModuleByID with sceKernelLoadModule: HLE also allows loading of modules.
Rev1240: Reorganized hardware information (currently Battery and MemoryStick) in own classes. Implemented Battery Drain (Battery power reduces by 1% every 3 minutes).
Rev1239: Context GE Fixed saving problem introduced in r1236
Rev1238: 2D mode is not affected by FOG. Reverted changes from r1236 CLEAR command for colorα mask.
Rev1237: Added tests for PMSKC / PMSKA 3D Studio.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments ...