MJJ Productions has been working on title 'for months'; Star recorded speech for release
A video game starring Michael Jackson's likeness and speech recorded before the musician died is set for a posthumous release.
Rumours of a new Jackson game have lingered ever since the star's death. But these now appear to have been confirmed.
The star's own production company, MJJ Productions, has been working on the game for 'several months', according to reports.
A Christmas 09 'home console release' – suggesting Xbox 360 and PS3 - is apparently scheduled.
It is understood that the game will feature a number of the star’s most iconic hits.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/35002/New-...e-in-the-works ...

Microsoft has refused to rule out the introduction of a pay-to-play model in the future for 1 Vs 100, the massively multiplayer online quiz game for Xbox 360 which launched in the UK today.

The game is currently free-to-play for all Xbox Live Gold subscribers for the duration of the first season, where gamers can compete in scheduled live shows and win real prizes.

"Our beta season is to see the interest in the game and the success of the game," Xbox Live marketing manager Tania Chee told GamesIndustry.biz, speaking in London yesterday at an event to mark the game's launch.

"In the beta season 1 it will be free for our Gold subscribers; moving forwards we have nothing to announce at this time. We ultimately hope it will be a resounding success so we can move forward into future seasons."

Asked whether Microsoft was specifically looking at introducing a subscription model, Chee said: "I don't know what's going to happen to be honest. It's a test for us to prove the platform will be a success."

1 Vs 100 is adapted from Endemol's successful TV format, and a live show will run on Xbox Live for the duration of the season every Friday and Saturday from 7:30pm-9:30pm BST. The UK version is hosted by James McCourt, with the first show airing this evening.

Yesterday's UK press launch, where invited journalists took part in a live game, was hosted by broadcaster Pat Sharp and the twins Martina and Melanie Grant, who became famous in the '90s as the faces – and hair - of ITV children's game show Fun House.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...y-for-1-vs-100 ...

We've already gotten the official word that it was coming last month, and gone hands-on with the identical United Keys OLED keyboard even earlier than that, but it looks like OCZ is now finally shipping its own Sabre OLED gaming keyboard and, consequently, given it a price. Somewhat surprisingly, OCZ is letting this one go for just $135, which, while still not exactly a bargain, is a heckuva lot cheaper than the $260 that the United Keys version still runs. That'll get you nine customizable OLED keys, along with most of the standard specs you'd expect from a gaming keyboard, including "super tactile" keys, plenty of macro configuration options and, of course, some blue LEDs to remind you that you didn't buy this thing for work.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/09/o...priced-at-135/ ...

The "leaked" version of Dragon Quest IX is malware. The ROM was dumped early on to Japanese bulletin board 2chan and is actually a hentai slideshow show called "DS Owata".

Maybe download "Dragon Quest IX JPN DSi Enchanced NDS iND" if you'd like a hentai slideshow? Oh, this bricks your DS. Buying it legally does not.

http://kotaku.com/5310666/hey-pirate...hentai-boobies ...

If you were hoping for more system sound configurability, better notification control, or an equalizer in the music player (heck, we'll settle for bass and treble), your wait might be nowhere close to over -- but the good news is that it appears there's some sort of update on the way for Pres in the field that's significant enough to justify a 0.1 bump in webOS' version number to 1.1. Corporate types will get all fired up over better managed Exchange policy integration with support for device wipe after failed PIN attempts, auto PIN lock, minimum password complexity, and a bunch of other things that your average Pre owner isn't going to give a flying iPhone about. Perhaps more interesting to everyone else is the claim that additional built-in apps are a possibility for 1.1, though there's no detail there -- it could be best-of-breed stuff culled from the App Catalog, new first-party apps, or a combination. PreCentral's hearing "within 30 days" for the release, so go ahead and get your firmware upgrade pants on now just in case.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/09/w...-sounds-borin/ ...

Are we finally seeing Nintendo's juggernaut performance of recent years slowing down? Figures have been trickling in over the past few weeks which tend to suggest that while Nintendo's rivals aren't going to catch up with the installed base of the Wii or the DS any time soon, the company's week to week sales are slowing. In some territories, the Wii is even being outsold by the Xbox 360 - just about the first time that this has happened since the console launched, if we disregard supply constraints.

Japan is seeing an overall malaise in the home console market, despite the continuing strength of the handheld sector. Nintendo will be happy to have seen Wii Sports Resort sell 350,000 units in its first week, but less pleased with the overall performance of the Wii hardware so far this year. In the United States, the Wii's sales graph is settling off - although admittedly, the slow-down in Wii sales means that the console is now "only" selling as fast as the market-dominating PS2 was at the same point in its lifespan.

Here in the UK, meanwhile, the latest figures to be released by retailers and market data bodies alike indicate that while the Wii's software continues to sell at a huge pace, the console's hardware sales have dropped back - with the Xbox 360 selling almost twice as many units in the months from January to June this year.

Microsoft is undoubtedly thrilled by the figures, even while recognising that the mountain it would have to climb to rival the Wii's installed base is extremely daunting - and that the Wii's significantly stronger software sales are undoubtedly influencing decisions in third-party publisher boardrooms around the world.

But what is causing the drop? Vocal gamers will mutter darkly about the Wii being a fad, about the consoles gathering dust in the corner - but the software sales for the platform prove them wrong. Some might speculate that the console has hit a sales peak because it has simply saturated its target market, but that seems unlikely given that the PS2 has shifted over twice as many units as the Wii has to date.

A number of factors, I believe, are conspiring against Nintendo's success at the moment - all of which are quite possibly short-term factors, making this into a temporary respite at best for the company's competitors.

First of all, there's something that's totally out of Nintendo's control - the global economy. The past six months have seen the credit crunch which dominated 2008's news headlines finally being translated into real effects on the economic well-being of almost every nation on earth. Rising unemployment and increasing pressure on the income and expenditure of families in the developed world means that budgets for entertainment and luxury items are feeling the squeeze.

This doesn't hurt Microsoft and Sony as badly as it hurts Nintendo. We often talk about the "recession-proof" games industry, and that's still a concept that's broadly true - this industry will grow through the recession. However, some sectors of the industry will suffer while others thrive, and the casual, family gaming market which Nintendo has so successfully exploited is less likely to see gaming as a core entertainment expenditure than the hardcore, dedicated gamers who buy Xbox 360s and PS3s.

The second factor, which is very closely related, is price. Howard Stringer can talk about price discussions being short-sighted until the cows come home, but it's still a very real, important factor in consumer buying decisions. The Nintendo Wii, quite astonishingly, has seen no adjustment to its RRP since the console launched - and its trade price in Europe has actually gone up, leaving retailers with significantly less ability to create attractive bundle deals for consumers.

The Xbox 360 and PS3 have both seen price cuts in the meanwhile, often accompanied with upgrades to the specifications of the system, with the 360 receiving two major cuts to the entire range of consoles - the most recent in September of last year. You can now buy the cheapest Xbox 360 for USD 100 less than it cost at launch, and it comes with a nice big memory card and some free Xbox Live Arcade games. The Wii, meanwhile, is exactly the same as it was at launch and hasn't dropped a single penny in price.

Consumers, especially family consumers, are exceptionally price sensitive, and they know that home electronics generally get cheaper over time. The Wii's price has been sustained to an almost artificially high level by the console's high sales - there was, after all, no convincing reason for Nintendo to drop the price while it was easily selling every unit it could make at the higher price point. Now, however, there is likely to be a significant body of pent-up demand for a price drop, since consumers will be aware that one is long overdue.

There is a final factor, however, which is arguably even more important than either of these - and that's games. Despite the strong sales of Wii software in recent months, the console ...

We've heard about Dragon Quest IX's local only co-op play. Now, let's finally watch famous Japanese celebrities play it.

For those who want to get right to the action, gameplay starts at about 3 minutes in.

According to this episode of Tsuruno Takeshi's new show Joudeki!! Geinoujin Kodawari Ou Kouza Iketaku, this is also the first time actual game play has been shown on television.

At the end of the program, DQ creator Yuji Horii comes out and talks about the pressure of making Dragon Quest games. Even though the credits are rolling why he's talking, still neat to see Horii on Japanese network television.

http://kotaku.com/5311517/first-look...o+op-game-play ...

When Japanese peripheral maker Hori revealed its ¥30,000 (US$323) dual joysticks for $15 Xbox LIVE Arcade game Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram, fans of the game were not happy. Pissed, even.

The beef? The layout was all wrong.

Hori has re-modeled the grip and layout. As game site Insert Credit points out, "The sticks are now sculpted more in-line with the Dreamcast original as well as the distance between the sticks themselves." One thing Hori hasn't re-modeled: That $300 price tag.

http://kotaku.com/5311528/300-dollar...ks-re+designed ...

Successful Wii Fit rival EA Sports Active is seemingly in the early stages of being ported from Nintendo’s machine to both Xbox 360 and PS3 thanks to the recent unveiling of both Microsoft’s Project Natal and Sony’s Motion Controller Prototype.
“Both companies are obviously great partners and they've shared their plans with us well in advance so it was no surprise to us,” Peter Moore told IndustryGamers.
“You could fully comprehend the excitement of sports when thinking about these technologies.

“Both companies came to us, asking 'what are your ideas for this?'.

"Anything where you're moving around in sports, and particularly the fitness element of what we're doing certainly ties well into what both Sony and Microsoft are trying to do now in taking a little bit of the action that Nintendo's clearly had for themselves so far.

“I think there's already a lot of learnings we have right now with our Wii products and certainly there's stuff with EA Sports Active that we could apply to both platforms. Fitness is a huge play for us and will continue to be a huge play for us, and this just makes the opportunity bigger, to say the least.”

http://www.casualgaming.biz/news/288...S3-motion-tech ...