Source SPong

Nintendo UK has just this morning announced some great news for all European DS gamers. Samus, gaming’s toughest heroine, is back in Metroid Prime Hunters which will launch across Europe on May 5, 2006, including free wireless voicechat technology to enable you to talk to friends anywhere in the world.

Yes, that’s right, you will be able to actually speak with up to three of your mates who you play online before and after battles, using your Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and microphone. This will effectively be like having a four-way mobile phone conversation with friends anywhere in the world for free. Awesome!.

Speaking to a Nintendo UK rep earlier today, we were told a few more details about this highly anticipated game and this groundbreaking new DS service.

Metroid Prime Hunters, if you don’t already know, was one of the most interesting and talked-about game demo that shipped with the original DS, and Nintendo fans have been waiting for the full, final game in all its glory since from the first day they realised the possibilities the game presented for touch-screen controls on a handheld fps.

Plus, as well as the much-vaunted touch-screen controls, Metroid Prime Hunters also features Wi-Fi game play (with up to seven others), a fully-fledged single player 3D first-person shooter mode as well as an extensive online multiplayer first person shooter mode (with up to three other mates), and the aforementioned VOIP features, of which we will come to shortly.

If you want more details on the game you can check out SPOnG’s recent coverage right here. Suffice to say it’s Metroid Prime and it’s the first online multiplayer first-person shooter to grace a handheld system. It is, in other words, an essential purchase. With this and New Super Mario Bros. both out in time for E3, it's already a good bet as to what handheld games are going to be the real talk of the show this year.

Players can compete locally with friends using the Nintendo DS wireless link, with the option of Single-Card Play – which means that you can enter battle in a selection of arenas with three friends, using only one cartridge. Or if all players have copies of the game, they can engage in one of the game’s seven multiplayer modes in Multi-Card Play with a selection of seven characters and 10 arenas to choose from.

Players can also battle friends, rivals and other people across the globe thanks to the unparalleled success which is the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service, using their home broadband connection or one of Nintendo’s public Wi-Fi hotspots. Players can select Find Game to play against opponents from across the globe, chosen by their skill level or battle friends from the list saved on their Nintendo DS in Friends and Rivals mode.

And, as mentioned before, you can now for the first time ever talk to up to three of your friends who you are playing the game online with. For free. Wherever they are in the world.

Now, before we get too excited and carried away by this idea, lets just add in a few caveats, as the marketing people like to say. You can only talk to people whose friend codes you know, which means you cannot use the service to meet new friends and talk to them as if you were in a portable Internet chatroom. This is is a good and safe thing all around, so please, any tabloid news hacks looking to stir up a controversial story about kids being groomed by potential paedophiles or any other such nonsense, just understand that this is NOT a possibility!

You can also only talk to your friends online using the voice-chat feature in the set up area of Metroid Prime Hunters and in the final scores area of the game. There is also - crucially - a time limit set on the voice-chat feature, so you will not be able to use your DS as a free mobile phone to contact your mates all over the world. No! Denied!

Seriously, this makes sense, otherwise, as one commentator mentioned earlier, it would detract from the Nintendo DS being viewed as a game console, and instead people would start to use it as a voice communication device, which is not what Nintendo want. Nor, importantly, does SPOnG think it is what Nokia, T-Mobile, O2 or any of the other major mobile phone network operators and manufacturers want!

We will have a more detailed update on exactly how long the voice-chat time limit is from Nintendo very shortly. We will also have more technical details on how the feature works. What, for example, happens if more than one person speaks at once? This and other questions will be answered by our Nintendo guys ‘after the jump’ as they say. Whatever the hell that actually means.

For those who don’t want to use the voice-chat feature in the game, there is also a text-chat feature. So if, for example, you are sitting on a bus or are in a public space and you don’t like shouting loudly into your DS (i.e. if you have respect for your fellow human beings); if you are in bed with your girlfriend ...

Source SPong

Nintendo UK has just this morning announced some great news for all European DS gamers. Samus, gaming’s toughest heroine, is back in Metroid Prime Hunters which will launch across Europe on May 5, 2006, including free wireless voicechat technology to enable you to talk to friends anywhere in the world.

Yes, that’s right, you will be able to actually speak with up to three of your mates who you play online before and after battles, using your Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and microphone. This will effectively be like having a four-way mobile phone conversation with friends anywhere in the world for free. Awesome!.

Speaking to a Nintendo UK rep earlier today, we were told a few more details about this highly anticipated game and this groundbreaking new DS service.

Metroid Prime Hunters, if you don’t already know, was one of the most interesting and talked-about game demo that shipped with the original DS, and Nintendo fans have been waiting for the full, final game in all its glory since from the first day they realised the possibilities the game presented for touch-screen controls on a handheld fps.

Plus, as well as the much-vaunted touch-screen controls, Metroid Prime Hunters also features Wi-Fi game play (with up to seven others), a fully-fledged single player 3D first-person shooter mode as well as an extensive online multiplayer first person shooter mode (with up to three other mates), and the aforementioned VOIP features, of which we will come to shortly.

If you want more details on the game you can check out SPOnG’s recent coverage right here. Suffice to say it’s Metroid Prime and it’s the first online multiplayer first-person shooter to grace a handheld system. It is, in other words, an essential purchase. With this and New Super Mario Bros. both out in time for E3, it's already a good bet as to what handheld games are going to be the real talk of the show this year.

Players can compete locally with friends using the Nintendo DS wireless link, with the option of Single-Card Play – which means that you can enter battle in a selection of arenas with three friends, using only one cartridge. Or if all players have copies of the game, they can engage in one of the game’s seven multiplayer modes in Multi-Card Play with a selection of seven characters and 10 arenas to choose from.

Players can also battle friends, rivals and other people across the globe thanks to the unparalleled success which is the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service, using their home broadband connection or one of Nintendo’s public Wi-Fi hotspots. Players can select Find Game to play against opponents from across the globe, chosen by their skill level or battle friends from the list saved on their Nintendo DS in Friends and Rivals mode.

And, as mentioned before, you can now for the first time ever talk to up to three of your friends who you are playing the game online with. For free. Wherever they are in the world.

Now, before we get too excited and carried away by this idea, lets just add in a few caveats, as the marketing people like to say. You can only talk to people whose friend codes you know, which means you cannot use the service to meet new friends and talk to them as if you were in a portable Internet chatroom. This is is a good and safe thing all around, so please, any tabloid news hacks looking to stir up a controversial story about kids being groomed by potential paedophiles or any other such nonsense, just understand that this is NOT a possibility!

You can also only talk to your friends online using the voice-chat feature in the set up area of Metroid Prime Hunters and in the final scores area of the game. There is also - crucially - a time limit set on the voice-chat feature, so you will not be able to use your DS as a free mobile phone to contact your mates all over the world. No! Denied!

Seriously, this makes sense, otherwise, as one commentator mentioned earlier, it would detract from the Nintendo DS being viewed as a game console, and instead people would start to use it as a voice communication device, which is not what Nintendo want. Nor, importantly, does SPOnG think it is what Nokia, T-Mobile, O2 or any of the other major mobile phone network operators and manufacturers want!

We will have a more detailed update on exactly how long the voice-chat time limit is from Nintendo very shortly. We will also have more technical details on how the feature works. What, for example, happens if more than one person speaks at once? This and other questions will be answered by our Nintendo guys ‘after the jump’ as they say. Whatever the hell that actually means.

For those who don’t want to use the voice-chat feature in the game, there is also a text-chat feature. So if, for example, you are sitting on a bus or are in a public space and you don’t like shouting loudly into your DS (i.e. if you have respect for your fellow human beings); if you are in bed with your girlfriend ...

After months of speculation and rumor concerning the PlayStation 3's projected launch, we may finally get some official answers from Sony as soon as this Wednesday. According to Koei CEO Kiyoshi Komatsu, Sony is planning a press conference for March 15 that may reveal long-awaited details of the console's availability. Ferrago is also reporting that a Taiwanese manufacturer won't begin assembling the PS3's circuit boards until the summer.

Given the potential development hassles Sony faces with cell processor and blu-ray drive production, and the fact that developers like Square Enix haven't seen any development kits yet, there's mounting evidence that even a holiday release could be too much to hope for. Will Sony end our fanboy misery and spill the beans on the PS3 launch this Wednesday, or will they wait for Phil Harrison's GDC keynote next week?

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/03/13/so...nce-this-week/ ...

PlayStation 3 may sport download service for selected PSone, PS2 titles

Reports from development sources close to Sony Computer Entertainment are indicating that the firm is planning a major digital distribution service for game content, which could be a key element of PlayStation 3 - or even of a relaunched PS2.

Several senior developers have confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that they have spoken informally with Sony about the question of digital distribution on consoles, although these discussions were described as being "purely about technology, not business models" by one source.

However, even the technology discussed could be very revealing regarding the Japanese giant's plans for the coming years - with one source from the development arm of a major third-party publisher claiming that Sony has been discussing the technical feasibility of providing PSone and PS2 titles over digital distribution with them.

This could indicate that Sony is hoping to provide a service for the PS3 similar to Nintendo's Revolution digital download system, which will allow users to access a back catalogue of Nintendo titles through the next-generation console.

In Sony's case the challenges may be significantly more difficult, since PlayStation titles were customarily several hundred megabytes in size, and PS2 titles spanned multiple gigabytes - compared to just a few megabytes or less for NES, SNES and N64 titles in the Nintendo back-catalogue.

However, as Internet connections speed up downloads of this size will be far more reasonable - already, several Xbox Live demos for the Xbox 360 are over 600Mb in size - and our sources indicated that Sony may also be investigating the possibility of remastering certain PS2 titles to allow them to stream later content over the network while the player is already playing early parts of the game.

The move would not be surprising, given that both other next-generation consoles will offer downloadable game content - Xbox Live Arcade and game demos in the case of Xbox 360, and the back catalogue download service on Revolution - which makes it highly unlikely that Sony will miss out on this opportunity.

The information from our development sources comes only days after Electronic Arts' European vice president of sales, Dr Jens Uwe Intat, confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that the leading publisher is already in discussions with platform holders over digital distribution - telling us that "we as a total industry, software publishers and hardware manufacturers, are already sitting together and working on business models."

One of the key requirements of digital distribution on this scale, however, is a large storage system - such as a hard drive, a component with which Sony has had a patchy history. Although the PlayStation 2 hardware can support a hard drive, the peripheral was unsuccessful and was only ever used to any great degree by Square Enix' massively multiplayer title Final Fantasy XI. The PlayStation 3 hardware will also support a hard drive unit but is set to ship without one pre-installed in the basic configuration.

Sony is expected to announce new information about its plans for PlayStation 3 in Tokyo on Wednesday, ahead of a keynote address from the firm's worldwide studios boss Phil Harrison at the Game Developers' Conference in San Jose next week.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15294 ...

Lik Sang have done one of thier great Hands On Reviews for the Xbox 360, heres the details:

For those of you who think 64 Megs is just not enough, we have today received stock of the Memory Transfer Kit from Datel for Xbox 360. While the product ships for US$ 14.99 within 24 hours, we took one of them to the test.



Preliminary Scene Developments

Early stage developments started already a couple of months ago in the scene... Before there was a commercial product from Datel, there was already a freeware called Xplorer 360 and some hand-made adapters that allowed you to exchange files back and forth between a PC and a 360 Memory Card. Xplorer 360 is already at beta version 4 and is available from the fine guys at 360GameSaves. Relying on a horde of D.I.Y. users, the popularity of the program grew a lot lately amongst hobbyists circles. We have even witnessed some efforts here and there from people like William Gonzalez, who have been assembling PCBs for those clumsy guys, like myself, who can't get nothing else than a couple of fingerburns out of a soldering iron.

William actually shared a couple of his prototypes with us in the week prior to Datel's announcement of the Transfer Kit, and for the low-price of US$ 5, they do their job quite neatly. Of course, there is no casing on them and that might represent a problem for many of you out there, both cosmetically and because of the risk to damage the pins in which you slot your Xbox 360 Memory Card (since the pins are completely naked and not protected by any kind of plastic connector). That's where the retail-ready Transfer Kit from Datel comes in with perfect timing...

Hands-on with Datel Transfer Kit

The Transfer Kit is the first professionally mass-produced adapter of its kind. It comes in a nice clamshell blister packaging as brick and mortar retailers like them. Out of the box, you'll get the Transfer Kit itself, an installation CD, a professional user's manual freshly baked by Datel's printing factory, and, as a free bonus, a complimentary adapter for Xbox1 Memory Cards.



When you plug the Transfer Kit and a Memory Card 360 for the first time into your USB port, Windows will detect it, prompting you to install drivers. Insert the supplied disc into your reader, point to the CD drive as the correct location to get the hardware drivers from and you're ready to go.

From the installation CD, you can furthermore install both Action Replay Xbox (for the complimentary Xbox1 Mem Card Adapter mentioned above) and the Xchange360 software that the UK based peripheral company prepped up for their new Transfer Kit. Xchange 360 allows you to back-up a complete Memory Card image to your PC hard drive, or, going the other way around, to restore an image back to the Memory Unit. Xchange360 does not extract or isolate single files. You will always have to transfer a complete "image" back and forth with the PC, which kinda limits the fun.



Luckily, the Xplorer360 freeware comes to the rescue on this. The latter does let you play around with separate files, be them pictures, game saves or others. This adds a lot of freedom to your data management, not to forget it makes it a whole lot easier for users to share files with one another. This is where the community can exchange their records in order to unlock in one click the games' cars, ammo, lives, eneregy and whatnot. So far, some gamers even successfully extracted screenshots that they took using the Photo Mode in Project Gotham Racing. That's a new cool way for a trendy magazine editor to generate stills [wink]. Tricky software, the Xplorer360 is much more interesting than Datel's Xchange360, even some homebrew scripts and power saves would theoretically work using this interface!

The good news is that Xplorer 360 does function properly with the Transfer Kit from Datel. You just need to make sure you DON'T install the drivers from the Datel disc. Instead, when plugging in your Transfer Kit for the first time and being prompted by Windows about drivers, point it to these INF files (after Unzipping them first - files supplied to us by William Gonzalez again, special thanks for all the help!). Then get Xplorer ready and enjoy. If you had installed the Datel stuff before reading these lines, chances are you are too exciteable, but chances are even greater that there is a way to troubleshoot the mix-up. Just go into the Control Panel of your OS and remove the USB device. Then insert the Transfer Kit to be prompted by Windows about drivers one more time. When you are, install the correct drivers in order to run Xplorer smoothly.

Beware that whether you use Xchange or Xplorer, one thing will not differ: some of your files cannot be used on another Xbox 360 system than yours. Arcade games, downloaded content from the Marketplace, among others, are connected to your Xbox Live account and will therefore not run at your friend's place on another console using another Xbox Live account. Keep ...

Lavod Corporation has announced that it has a pair of MP3 players ideally suited to those of you who feel no need to distinguish between serviettes and toilet paper.

Indeed, the PocketPlay 320 and 350 are designed to appeal to fans of combining things, offering as they do the opportunity to listen to music (in the 350's case, WMAs as well as MP3s) and play 8-bit Sega games on their 2.4-inch TFT displays.

As you can see from the picture both are dinky little devices but, rather as you do when you reach for Bounty-the-stronger-soaker-upper following the expenditure of Andrex, once you cross purposes you will discover surprising depth to the proposition. (Metaphorically speaking, they'd certainly block the loo.)

That's because the 320 offers 20 Sega games and the 350 offers 10. These include the likes of Sonic Chaos, Ecco the Dolphin, Sonic Spinball, Columns and Fantasy Zone. Both have TV outputs too, so they're practically consoles. The 350 also features an SD Card slot and a USB 2.0 port.

Lavod's press release doesn't mention pricing, but apparently both will be available from various distributors in Germany, Switzerland and Austria from April, so you might be able to track them down through grey importers.

Or, if you actually do harbour some misplaced desire to scratch a retro itch and you're not just reading this far to see if I can do any more crap jokes, you could just buy one of the many Sega compilations for your existing consoles instead. Since they will almost certainly be cheaper and better.

You won't be able to play them on the loo, obviously, but then not everything you do in the lounge or kitchen has to be, does it?

SCREENSHOT Via Comments ...

Divineo USA have posted news about the Xecuter 3 IR .

Finally, we got enough Xecuter 3 IR to fill all our back orders. This product can now be shipped within 24h.



Features:
1. Blue status led
2. Compatible with any chip
3. Enable/Disable chip upon boot.
4. Easy to use programming software
5. Learning functionality allows virtually any remote control to be used
6. User programmable buttons for all functions, such as wich button turns on the xbox or turns it off
7. Safety Off makes sure you press the 'OFF' button 3 times before turning off the xbox to prevent unintended xbox shutdown
8. Turn ON and OFF the XBOX with the XBOX Dvd remote control, and any RCA DVD compatible remote (and there are hundreds of these)
9. Perfect-Press - The length of emulated press of front panel 'Power' button can be finely tuned to work with any chips' needs (ie. long press is 100msec - mod on, short press is 10msec - mod off) ...

Divineo USA have posted news about the Xenium GOLD SP modchip:

We got the first (small) batch of Xenium GOLD SP. Unfortunately, there is few pre-order that we wont be able to fill. We should receive another (bigger) batch of GOLD SP in 1 or 2 weeks. The GOLD version, without the SP adapter should be available at the same time.



The GOLD SP is based on the Xenium GOLD chip, but with a totally solderless installation on ALL Xbox version, from V1.0 to V1.7! It has all the features of the amazing Xenium GOLD but is so easy to install you will only need minutes to get it running! ...

Divineo USA have posted news that they have the DuoQ Modchip in stock.



- Supports multi-disc and AR
- compatible with all regions & all versions
- region free loading
- low power design
- Simple 6 wire installation points
- super easy wireless install
- Jumperless solution for Pal, US and Jap machines
- no need to remove mainboard
- PAL/NTSC region force
- installation control LEDs
- switchable read setting adjustment / error retry (left joystick toggles upon booting)
- switchable audiofix (right joystick toggles upon booting)
- anti-static packaging
- THIS PRODUCT IS NOT UPGRADABLE ...