via Eurogamer


Microsoft has issued a statement (you have probably already seen) saying you will not be banned from Xbox Live for playing Halo 3 ahead of its official launch next Wednesday.

Copies of the game went on sale at UK retailer Argos yesterday, with many of you getting your hands on one.

Many feared their Live accounts would be in jeopardy after misleading comments were posted online, claiming anyone so much as running through the single-player element would have the Gamercard associated with the progress banned.

Microsoft has since come out and said it will also not penalise the retailer, as it is satisfied it was a genuine mistake. ...

via IGN


The PlayStation Store will be getting a few new items this week to take a look at, since today is, of course, Thursday. Four new demos will be available in today's update, including ones for Skate, NBA 08, Sega Rally Revo and Stuntman: Ignition. There will also be a brand new downloadable game for purchase: LocoRoco Cocoreccho! for $6.99.

In addition to these bigger updates, there will also be a few new wallpapers to peruse through, as well as new trailers for GT5 Prologue, Ratchet & Clank Future and Devil May Cry 4.

Head on over to the PlayStation Store soon to check them out. ...

via Games Industry


Microsoft will not penalise Argos for releasing a small number of Halo 3 final boxed copies to the public a week before the official release.

Neil Thompson, senior regional director for the UK and Ireland at Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division, has told GamesIndustry.biz he is satisfied that the occurrence was not malicious, and that it was a genuine mistake which the retailer has gone to great lengths to prevent from happening again.


He added that he was pleased other retailers hadn't used the slip as an opportunity to break the street date themselves, and warned that any company doing so intentionally could expect Microsoft to withdraw its support.


Halo 3 is set to launch next Wednesday in the UK in a blaze of publicity, with hype levels rivalling the biggest of box office premieres, but Thompson isn't concerned that too much hype could be an issue.


Thompson spoke to GamesIndustry.biz at a press event in which Microsoft was rounding up its Christmas line-up, and the full interview will be published next week. ...

via Kotaku


As mentioned by Kaz in his TGS keynote, the power of the PS3 has carried the Folding@home project to a milestone never before reached on a distributed computing network - the petaflop...one quadrillion floating point operations per second. It would take everyone in the world doing 75,000 calculations in a second to achieve similar results, so the milestone is pretty massive.


...

Via: play.tm

Early reports this afternoon indicate that a beta version of the uncut Manhunt 2 has been leaked onto the internet by unnamed hackers. The code in question is for the PS2 version of the controversial title, of a build that pre-dates the game's banning in several countries.

Rockstar have yet to offer comment on the stolen code, and are presumably working hard to halt distribution of the illegal game, which was banned in several European nations, and effectively prevented from going on sale by Sony and Nintendo in the USA.

'Team Slonik' are taking credit for delivering the leaked copy of the game to the internet, according to ProjectManhunt.com, though how genuine this game really is is very much open to debate. That being said, we do hear reports that cut-scenes taken from the uncut beta have found there way onto you YouTube, much to Rockstar's consternation no doubt.

More as we get it. ...

Via: play.tm

With several days to go before Halo 3 is officially released in Europe, the US and Japan, it is with a sense of inevitability we report the leak of the final game onto the interweb, where the full release disc has been copies and distributed by game pirates.

Earlier this week, a couple of UK retailers (accidentally or otherwise), were accused of breaking the street date for Bungie's titanic third release, while similar reports have been hinted in other parts of the world, too.

Of course, illegally pirated versions of the full title won't work on normal Xbox 360 consoles, and those who have modified their systems could face bans from Xbox Live if Microsoft detect user agreement-breaching modifications. No Xbox Live would of course mean no online gaming; one of the most important aspects of the new release in any case.

That said, news of the game's leak once again highlights the organised and determined efforts of software pirates, who more often than not glean copies of big name releases prior to release. ...

Via: Pocket-lint

20 September 2007 16:10 GMT - Sony has announced at the Tokyo Games Show that their interactive online service Home, currently in closed beta, has been delayed until Spring 2008.

At an Xbox 360 games preview event we caught up with a nicely placed Microsoft executive to try and find out the Sony rival's thoughts on the news, and whether Home would pose a competitive challenge, when it eventually does launch.

John Rooke, Microsoft's UK marketing manager for second and third party Xbox 360 games, cut to the chase and said: "I think Sony will struggle".

Revealing that, "We hope to have 10 million users online by E3", up from the 7.1 million they have now, Rooke talked about why he thinks Xbox Live has managed to achieve such high audience numbers:

"Lots of people complained when we launched Xbox Live about our rigorous standards, but it has meant that now we can offer a complete service that works every time, for everyone."

Aspects of Xbox Live are carefully managed by Microsoft in order to ensure that any games developer can produce reliable Live-compatible multi-playing options.

It appears that Sony has not followed this path, as well as the Home delays, Virtua Fighter 5 is an example of a title that will offer more multi-playing features on the Xbox 360 platform. ...

Via: IGN

US, September 20, 2007 - Let's make this perfectly clear: I'm one of those fans of the original Saturn version of Nights: Into Dreams, one who played it to death to the point where there was nothing more to see. I'm one of those gamers that begged and pleaded openly for SEGA and Sonic Team to revisit the property for a sequel. I'm one of those gamers who got annoyed at the company teasing with Nights cameos in other SEGA games; who got excited when SEGA gave away a really cool Game Boy Advance Nights gameplay/tech demo in Phantasy Star Online for the GameCube. And now I'm faced with the dilemma that is Nights: Journey of Dreams on the Wii.

Nights: Journey of Dreams was announced for the Wii a few months ago, and sped through development to make a Christmas release. It's been slowly taking shape between then and now, and it's been a rough journey…no pun intended. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo this July we had an opportunity to watch an early, choppy version of the game being played by a SEGA employee, but couldn't control it ourselves…we just had to imagine how the game might play simply by what was going on during the demo. And honestly, that doesn't really help a game that really needs to be played to understand - the Nights design isn't your traditional videogame.

So it's been two months since our last viewing of Nights: Journey of Dreams. It's on the show floor at Tokyo Game Show in SEGA's booth, in a high-profile space with more than a half-dozen kiosks dedicated to the game. And I have to say that, though the game has had its rough ups and downs and never really came across as a "high quality" Wii game in screens and early video…the demo that's here brings back that ol' Saturn feeling.

First, a little background: Nights is more a racing game with action than it is a platformer. The idea is to gracefully fly around the 3D environments on a 2D plane, looping around enemies, snagging orbs and flying through hoops for score. While this is going on, a timer's ticking away, so you have to make it to the "track's" finish line before the seconds expire. Each level is broken down by three laps, each one changing slightly from the one before it to let players explore portions of a level that the previous lap didn't let them see. At the end of each lap, the player's ranked by the score they earned on each lap, so players are encouraged to snag items and fly through hoops to keep a chain going that'll increase the multiplier. It's a fantastic, yet very deceptive game design that might not float everyone's boat. But it floats mine, and the Wii version captures a lot of that same Saturn magic, even if it's not doing it quite as impressively or as efficiently as it could have.

The Wii version's controlled via the Nunchuk's analog stick, and the Wii remote's only being used for its buttons - no waggle. I hear that the game will have many control schemes, including Classic Controller support as well as one that uses the Wii Remote's pointing function, but at TGS it was Nunchuk/Remote exclusively.

The demo starts out with you as a child, and you must climb up a chain to a cage that'll free the Nights jester. That's when the action really begins: lots of ups and downs and loops must be performed, but the main task is to catch up with a bird that's flying the course with a key in its beak. Attack the bird, grab the key, and head to the cage to start the second lap that heads down a slightly altered path in the 3D environment. The Wii version emphasizes the "racing" aspect of the design by showing a map of the course in the corner of the screen…much like every racing video game does.

At the end of the three laps, it's off to the boss battle. In one boss battle, you're up against a balloon clown that bounces around the environment - the idea is to attack it from below and bounce it up high to the top of a very pinball machine-inspired level layout to defeat it. In another boss battle, it's a chameleon lizard magician that hides in a cloud of purple mist - the idea is to make large loops to remove the mist in chunks and reveal where he's hiding.

There were some hidden treats that I saw other players doing that I couldn't recreate myself during my short hands-on. In one stage, for example, Nights can snag a pick-up that'll transform him into a dolphin (complete with the same jester clothing) to swim deep into the underwater areas. It was a neat addition that I'm looking forward to trying out myself.

I definitely came off of Nights: Journey of Dreams happier than I thought I would - I'm a little irked that the game's not as smooth as I would have liked. The Saturn game doesn't exactly have the smoothest framerate either, but in the first generation of 3D systems this was an area where we looked the other way, but now a herky jerky framerate ...

Via: digital spy

Thursday, September 20 2007

The top-selling Super Paper Mario has a serious bug that causes the Wii console to crash, Nintendo has revealed.

The bug, which occurs at the start of Chapter 2-2, forces the gamer to re-boot their console and restart the game from their last save point.

A Nintendo spokesman, who claims the bug is avoidable, said: "At the start of Chapter 2-2, you will come across a character called Mimi. She will tell you to go to the farthest room on the first floor to meet a character called Merlee.

"Enter that room and press the green switch. A trap will be triggered, and a spiked ceiling will descend upon Mario. Before the ceiling reaches him, flip into 3D and jump on it to find a key.

“If you pick up the key, you won't run into any problems. Use it to open the locked door to Mimi's right. However, if you talk to Mimi without picking up the key, the game will freeze. You will then have to turn off your Wii console and start again from your last save point.”

The company has assured users the problem will not damage the Wii or the game disc - but has promised to replace the disc for anyone who feels concerned. ...