Video Games – Page 336

HD-DVD Wins!

In a surprising turn of events Paramount Pictures has come out and said they will release titles on HD-DVD exclusively! This is huge considering the mega Transformers movie will be arriving on the HD format very soon. Kelley Avery, president of Paramount Home Entertainment, said that the reason why Paramount decided to exclusively release movies onto HD-DVD instead of Blu-Ray is because of HD-DVDs better quality and lower cost. Blades of Glory and Transformers will arrive on HD-DVD this Fall as the first batch of titles.

Dreamworks will also be using HD-DVD as their exclusive format and will be releasing Shrek the Third this Fall as well. Other related studios to use HD-DVD in this announcement are Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films. However Steven Spielberg’s movies will not be exclusive to HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Considering how anti-HD Spielberg is to begin with it’s not that surprising.

So far Blu-Ray discs have been outselling HD-DVD because Blu-Ray has the higher install base as PS3’s are also Blu-Ray players. On the other hand the cheapest HD-DVD player is the add-on for the Xbox 360 which hasn’t sold spectacularly yet.

Looking at Fall’s HD disc lineup for Blu-Ray the major two titles are Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

If HD-DVD does not meet or surpass Blu-Ray sales this Holiday season, studios could begin to question the future of the format. For consumers waiting to adopt a HD format things have just gotten a little crazier.

I own the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360, but I haven’t bought a HD movie since I purchased the unit. I can’t tell a huge difference between HD titles and regular DVDs so why pay the extra money per disc? The huge advantage to this next-gen formats is with box sets. Now you’ll be able to fit more hours of content onto a single disc which makes viewing extra features better for everyone.

Blu-Ray is here to stay because Sony is using it on the PS3. As long as the PS3 is bought by consumers, Blu-Ray will always have a stake in this war. If Microsoft truly wants HD-DVD to win they will have to integrate it with the system. I think Microsoft will release this combo system next year if HD-DVD can survive this Holiday season.

[Via Reuters]

BioShock PC Demo is finally out!

BioShock Screenshot

How do you describe this week in one word? Easy. BIOSHOCK. This game has been breaking records, critics are selling their souls to this game, people are killing for it, it’s a bloody sensation. BioShock is easily one of the greatest games of our time, and it’s coming out tomorrow in America, and on assorted dates for the rest of the world.

Xbox 360 gamers have had a fun time with the Xbox 360 demo that came out a while ago, but it’s us poor PC gamers that have to suffer. But not anymore! Word has come from The Cult of Rapture that the demo will be out today, that is August 20! While I can’t seem to find a site with the thing yet (not even Fileplanet), somebody at The Pirate Bay has gotten it. I have no doubt that BioShock is all over the torrenting sites right now.

God, I wish I had a computer that could at least dress decently in front of this game.

Blizzard getting sued by Chinese firm

Yes well, thankfully it’s not the Chinese Government that’s going gung-ho this time. Blizzard Entertainment, the famous makers of the StarCraft series, the WarCraft series, and of course, World of Warcraft are getting sued by Chinese IT firm Founder Electronics Co., Ltd. Blizzard is sharing the pain with IT company The9, which handles WoW in China and Qingwentuwen company, which handles it in Beijing.

The offence? Nope, it’s not enslaving half of the Chinese population, but stealing five of the fonts made by Founder Electronics and using them in World of Warcraft. Awesome lawsuit strategy. Founder claims that they lost “One Billion Yuan” because of the whole thing, seeing as WoW itself snowballed into 7.5 million players. If my conversion is correct, that should translate to $131,648,235. Big money, indeed.

If some people are right, this is the largest intellectual property lawsuit in the land of the dragon as far as damages are concerned. It appears that Blizzard is in quite a spot.

[Via Xinhuanet]

Buy kickass Covenant Weapons!

Right when you thought we’d spend some time without reporting news on Halo 3 merchandise, we hit you with this. These are full-size replicas of the famous Halo weapons, the Plasma Pistol (left) and the Plasma Rifle (right), both of which are decent weapons. I still want the assault rifle very badly, though. 🙁

These babies actually light up, recoil, vibrate and do all the cool shit that the things in the game do. And no, these are NOT props for the upcoming movie (which that real-life Warthog is). You can actually buy these!

They’re made of glossy rubber and plastic and don’t fire plasma as of now, though that must in development. The pistol is priced at $70 right now and the rifle is at $120. Buy them while stocks last, because there aren’t many of them yet. But just wait till the Covenant actually invade the planet. We’ll have plenty then.

[Via Digg. Buy it here.]

Nintendo Anti-Mexican

Mexican Workers

Over 15,000 counterfeit Nintendo products were collected today across 12 distributors in Guadalajara. Of those 4,500 were Wii game discs. This wasn’t the first time that Nintendo has worked with Mexican authorities to fight against counterfeits, Last month, Nintendo stopped a shipment of more than 5,500 counterfeit Nintendo products entering Manzanillo, exported from China. Prior to that, 23 stores were shut down and more than 56,000 counterfeit Nintendo products were confiscated, including 11,000 counterfeit Wii discs, in San Juan de Dios market in Guadalajara.

“Mexico is Nintendo’s largest market in Latin America, where the problem of video game piracy is widespread,” said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America’s senior director of anti-piracy.

My Repaired 360 is IN

Green Ring of Light

I received my repaired Xbox 360 yesterday at 6pm. I opened it up to find the, as promised, 1 month free Xbox Live gamer card. After unwrapping the console I looked for the dent that my system had and it wasn’t there. No I didn’t receive someone else’s Xbox 360, I received a brand-new one! Microsoft appears to be fixing the Ring of Death issue by sending newly manufactured systems that fix the heat sync issue.

When I powered up the system I could barely hear it running! If you remember turning on your 360 for the very first time when you got it a year ago, it sounded like a beast. Whatever Microsoft did it seems to have worked. I haven’t played any games with the console other than demos off the harddrive, but I’ve left the system on for six hours straight as I downloaded more demos and the system worked like a charm.

I noticed however that when laying the system on its side and running it for hours, the side touching the floor was still very hot, while the opposite side was relatively cool. My suggestion for all you 360 owners out there is to stand your console up when you use it. This way you can get maximum airflow in and out of the system on both sides of the console.

Personally I’m going try and to keep my Xbox 360 off to the side rather than in my media center cabinet.

It took me four posts to cover this repairing event and I’m sad to see this saga come to an end. In total the whole process was 1 month and 1 day.

Considering that Microsoft has extended the warranty to three years, I might break my console on purpose to get the new hardware 3 years from now. Who knows how much Microsoft will have improved the 360’s architecture by that time.