Team AfterShock have just released their highly promising Star Wars Homebrew game for the Xbox, heres the info:[br][br] STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE FOR HOMEBREW[br]Star Wars is our first group game, it supports a short story mode, and a death match of up to 4 humans and up to 8 players (bots).[br][br]Our first release. Seems decent enough to give to the people. We slaved over this for months so you better love it.[br]Untamed Rillas should be worth playing. Hopefully that will be out soon.[br]There's an md5 check on the media so that you'll know if you download a damaged version. This is the first homebrew to have 5.1 and use the XACT engine. [br] [br][br]More information and screenshots Here ...

Our friend from IRC Kojote informed me that he has made a new look for his great PD Roms site which is the very best place on the internet for Public Domain Roms for many systems. [br][br]Check it out here --> http://www.pdroms.de/index.php ...

This isnt pure Dreamcast news but it does have Dreamcast interest and its very intrigueing news at that, heres the news from an old pal of mine and LyonHrts:[br][br]News from the Rockin-B:[br][br]I released a snapshot of a long term project currently going under the name SAHLI - SAturn High Level Interpreter.[br]It's a simple TicTacToe demo created with SAHLI in about half of an hour. The snapshot runs on MacOS X, you may need the SDL pakage.[br]All game creation capabilities are disabled and the TicTacToe demo uses only a small portion of the functionality of SAHLI. [br][br]So what is SAHLI?[br][br]A complete console game development environment for classic consoles. The key fact is that it runs on the target console itself! For this, it has got some sort of own programming language, a powerful editor, which is ASCII based for good reasons. [br]It's initially targeted to enable you to make simple 2D games with it. With just less then 20 built in modules, it is already capable to create most of the games I want it to. [br]SAHLI is portable. It's main target platform is the SEGA Saturn, of course. But the current development is done on MacOS X using SDL and so it potentially runs on all computer systems that got a SDL port. This includes consoles like the GP32, Dreamcast and maybe others. [br]The games created with it are very small. The TicTacToe game, for example, is exactly 339 bytes small(the sprites are not included). [br]The SAHLI games will run on all platforms supported by SAHLI. This means you can create a game using SAHLI on your SEGA Saturn or your iBook, for example, and run it on your Windows or Linux PC or even Dreamcast without any change. [br]By creating an application with it, you define a new module in addition to the built in modules. Just like those, your app can be instantiated as a node in other apps. And so on. This creates a hierarchy and eases reusing and speeds up game creation. [br][br]As i said its very interesting, more info downloads etc here --> http://www.rockin-b.de/ ...

According to Reuters, Nokia recently cut back the target number of N-Gage games launching for the year. Originally set at 100 new games, that number has now been scaled back to 40. Nokia originally planned last December to expand their range of titles from 50 to a 100 by the end of 2004, something that they will apparently fall short of.[br][br]"For the Christmas market, there will be (altogether) 40 games available," Nokia's Chief Strategy Officer Matti Alahuhta said in a presentation at the Nokia Connection 2004 event in Helsinki. There are some 20 titles available now, he said. [br][br]The N-Gage has been as troubled as a game system can be since the release of the system late last year. Everything from the design (side-talking), to the price ($299 at the start), to the game library has suffered a severe amount of derision from the gaming community. Recently, Nokia has seen fit to try and correct some of the complaints, with the newer, cheaper, sleeker N-Gage QD. While N-Gage QD released a couple weeks ago in Europe, it's US release was recently delayed more than a month, pushed back from the original date of June 24th to July 27th. With the Nintendo DS coming this winter and Sony's PSP due early 2005, now is a critical time for N-Gage to acquire market share before powerful competitors come knocking. ...

Nokia has reduced the number of N-Gage games expected this year from around 100 to 40 due to a stuttering start, according to reports from Reuters.[br]The Finnish mobile phone manufacturer announced the modest figures at Helsinki's Nokia Connection 2004 event, admitting that sales figures for the console-cum-phone had so far been disappointing.[br][br]The original N-Gage enjoyed a major launch last year, but immediately failed to challenge Nintendo's hold on the handheld market by some distance (if it is fair to assume that it was competing with Nintendo, that is), with clumsy battery changing and a small screen adding to the machine's lack of software support. [br][br]Consequently, the company responded with the revamped N-Gage QD phone in May, but so far, even this has failed to re-ignite interest.[br][br]That said, Nokia has still managed to acquire a few major gaming franchises, many of which debuted at E3, which it hopes will be amongst its 40 titles to release before the year's out. These include EA's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004, Activision's Call of Duty and Spider-Man 2, Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm, THQ's Worms and WWE, as well as first-party releases Operation Shadow and Pathway to Glory. [br][br]How this will translate to the N-Gage format remains to be seen, but on paper at least, there certainly seems to be a modicun of potential amongst its trimmed line-up. ...

I tried to newspost this, but, as Wraggster mentioned, we are having issues with our newsposting.

• JoMyFriendAtWork made a new graphics library for Dreamcast and PC programming which does basic 2d graphics using 3D hardware (giving ability to rotate, scale, ect). The library works on both PC (using SDL and OpenGL) and on the Dreamcast (using DMA PVR). He also made a clone of an old hockey game named hat trick and it runs very well from dcload-ip.
  
  You can find out more, as well as get the downloads from this Consolevision forum post.

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We are having problems posting news at this time, an upgrade was done to the security of the server 2 days ago and it seems to be playing up the news script with strange 406 errors, im getting the same at VGN too so its a server issue, i or others will keep you informed of any news relating to this issue. ...

Comments made in a Japanese newspaper by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata indicate that the company is planning to continue to sell the GameCube hardware well into the lifespan of its next-generation console, codenamed "Revolution."[br][br]Iwata told Yomiuri Shimbun that Nintendo may well sell the "Revolution" device alongside the GameCube hardware for quite some time - presumably hoping to follow in the footsteps of Sony, which continued to sell large volumes of the PSone long after the launch of the PS2.[br][br]However, it's not clear whether Iwata's comments represent a commitment from the company to continue developing new software for the GameCube into the next console cycle, or simply an intention to continue supplying the channel with new units for as long as they are required.[br][br]The "Revolution" system, which is Nintendo's next home console, will be unveiled at E3 next May in Los Angeles, and is expected to launch in 2006 - although the E3 unveiling could equally indicate a late 2005 launch in Japan.[br][br]Nintendo has pledged that "Revolution" will mark a genuine departure from traditional home consoles, with a focus not only on increased processing and graphical prowess but on new ways of interacting with the system and new forms of gameplay. ...

Industry bosses speaking at the Piper Jaffrey conference in New York have sounded notes of cautious optimism about Microsoft's next-generation plans, with EB president Jeff Griffiths saying that the system could win 30 per cent market share.[br][br]"Yes, they could get a 30 per cent share, " Griffiths told the conference, speaking about the Xbox 2 console which is widely expected to launch by late 2005. "I think if they got less than that they'd be disappointed. If they come out earlier than Sony, if they have the breadth of exclusive titles like Sony had for PS2, I think they'd definitely have potential for market share leadership."[br][br]While it's obviously positive that key industry executives such as Griffiths believe that the Xbox 2 could share leadership in the next generation, his statement has a number of important caveats - particularly in terms of Microsoft's ability to deliver on exclusive titles as Sony has.[br][br]"I think Microsoft is being more aggressive," agreed THQ CEO Brian Farrell, but like Griffiths, he too qualified his optimism heavily. "Can they gain share?" he asked, "Yes. Do they have to have a solid value proposition? Yes. Do they have to have aggressive marketing? Yes."[br][br]The aggressive marketing, at least, is almost guaranteed - reports within the industry suggest that Microsoft has earmarked a marketing spend for Xbox 2 which is twice as large as the massive above the line campaign for the original console.[br][br]Xbox 2 is expected to launch well ahead of its competitors from Sony and Nintendo, with the new console potentially arriving at US retail by the middle of 2005 - having slipped past Microsoft's original highly aggressive target of Christmas 2004.[br][br]Although many in the industry expect the Redmond-based software giant to grow its market share of the games industry significantly in the next generation, some industry bosses have expressed concern at the prospect of having to support both Xbox 2 - a next generation platform with a small installed base - and PlayStation 2, a current generation system with a massive installed base - for a number of years, as cross-development between the two platforms will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. ...