January 26, 2012

Next Gen Xbox rumors

Its no secret the Microsoft has begun its first stages of devel­op­ment for its next install­ment of Xbox gam­ing hard­ware. Lit­tle is known but regard­less rumors seep through the grape vine. The lat­est set of rumors to sur­face regard­ing the next Xbox are that it will intro­duce the next level of Kinect hard­ware and will sup­pos­edly the next Kinect will ship with the next Xbox.

The next gen Kinect is rumored to have an onboard CPU that will increase its motion detec­tion (and hope­fully reduce lag asso­ci­ated with the cur­rent Kinect), a fea­ture that was con­sid­ered for the cur­rent Kinect but never made it to the fin­ished product.

Also the next Xbox is said to uti­lize Blu Ray instead of DVD, a wise choice if Microsoft intends to con­tinue to com­pete. Really though it was only a mat­ter of time before they suc­cumbed to Blu Ray, yes Microsoft spear­headed HD DVD but it lost and its time to move on.

And last but prob­a­bly the most con­tro­ver­sal piece of uncon­firmed news is that the next Xbox is rumored to use a new tech that will actu­ally block users from play­ing used games on the con­sole. Should this rumor come to fruition it will be a bad move by Microsoft. Will it kill the com­pany or even the Xbox? no, but it will undoubt­edly piss off the major­ity of Microsofts user base, espe­cially the bud­get gamers. For brand new games this is less of an issue see­ing as you only save about $5–10, but for older games that can be had for $10–30 this will cre­ate issue. Hope­fully Microsoft doesnt make such a force­full move or they will likely lose some of their rev­enue to those who can get the same used games for Playstation.

January 25, 2012

Music for Gamer’s: Wednesday Edition

Today were going to some­thing a bit more epic, slower, and could be quite pos­si­bly the best sound­track avail­able on the Xbox Live Arcade. This is Aster­oid Belt by Steve Burke off of the Fusion: Gen­e­sis Sound­track. For a small project started by a group of for­mer Rare employee’s, the game play and sound­track are ambi­tious. Fusion: Gen­e­sis has the sound­track of a full pro­duc­tion which, par­don the pun, is rare. Steve Burke deliv­ers a sound­track as epic as the vast­ness of space. This par­tic­u­lar piece is in one of the early sec­tions of the game and you can get a great sense that what you are going to expe­ri­ence great Sci-Fi bat­tles and explo­ration. Hit the link to find the down­load and take a look into Fusion: Gen­e­sis a great “Diet” MMO avail­able on XBLA.

http://www.steveburkemusic.com/music.html

January 24, 2012

Music for Gamer’s: Tuesday edition

Today we go from one of gam­ings great­est fran­chises to another. Street Fighter has been a fight­ing genre sta­ple since the early 90’s. Today’s track comes from the Super Street Fighter HD remake that was released for down­load a few years ago. Clam­ato Fever by AE & Prozax should open every EVO tour­na­ment, the song is epic. Get ready to rock the asphalt and go toe to toe with today’s great­est war­riors with this fan­tas­tic remix from the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Off­i­cal Sound­track. As before hit the link below to find where you can down­load this track, enjoy!

http://ocremix.org/album/12/oc-remix-super-street-fighter-ii-turbo-hd-remix-official-soundtrack

January 24, 2012

D20 Girls Giveaway Winner!!!

We apol­o­gize for the delay but we have a winner, Congratulations to Karen from D20 Girls for win­ning the giveaway!!!

Thanks to every­one who par­tic­i­pated and we hope to con­tinue to see you on the site

January 23, 2012

MS points coming to an end?

Rumor has it that the Microsoft vir­tual cur­rency sys­tem that uti­lizes Microsoft Points will be get­ting phased out in favor of real world cur­rency. By the end of 2012 the Xbox Live mar­ket­place, zune, and win­dows phone and any other devices/software where one would use MS points will be con­verted over to using actual dol­lar amounts for pur­chases. This is of course the unof­fi­cial word as it is still just a rumor, but I think we can all be hope­ful that this change will take place.

The point sys­tem isnt a bad sys­tem in its entirety, there have been pur­chases ive made that when I did the math it was actu­ally a bit cheaper to buy with points than with cash, and if buy­ing some­thing that was a few hun­dred points then same dif­fer­ence. How­ever Microsoft has ripped many a cus­tomer off by forc­ing the point sys­tem on them. The min­i­mum you can buy is 400 points, what if you sim­ply want an avatar item val­ued at 100 points? well your either stuck with 300 points youll never use or your forced to buy more in order to get some­thing else just to get rid of the points you ini­tially pur­chased. Its basi­cally Microsoft forc­ing cus­tomers into a “min­i­mum pur­chase” regard­less of what the per­son wants to buy. And even for large pur­chases there is likely a few points left over that will never get used. Ill admit this likely doesnt bother most users but its still a rip off any­way you look at it, Microsoft is get­ting your cash to be used how­ever they see fit and you are left with points you may never use. Lets hope the rumors are true and Microsoft changes to a real world cur­rency system.

January 23, 2012

Music for Gamer’s: Monday edition

As of today I am launch­ing a new Mon­day through Fri­day fea­ture arti­cle that will encom­pass all things video game music related. The title of the arti­cle is still up in the air at this point but the con­tent will remain the same, I am tak­ing sug­ges­tions.  Game Trax has been sug­gested but I am giv­ing it up to a vote. To the con­tent! Every day dur­ing the week I will high­light a new song, orig­i­nal or remixed. I have a plethora of con­tent to post and hope that you, the read­ers, find some really great music to lis­ten to and down­load. I will only be post­ing things I have obtained through the proper chan­nels and will be post­ing links to where you can down­load this fine con­tent and give the artist their dues. Don’t worry there will be plenty of free stuff but all worth check­ing out regard­less of price. Not enough gam­ing news sites fea­ture game music and it is a real crime, but no fears, we are here to pick up the slack. To kick start this new wave of fea­tures, we will be vis­it­ing one of my favorite series and giv­ing thanks it was around to cel­e­brate it’s 25^th anniver­sary late last year. This song, Thun­der­struck, was done by Big Giant Cir­cles ft. some1namedjeff, and came from the Over­Clocked Remix album 25YearLegend: A Leg­end of Zelda Indie Game Com­poser Trib­ute. A great mix of 8-bit sounds and mod­ern sounds this song and album are becom­ing one of my favorites from the great men and women over at Over­Clocked. The link to the album is below and hope every­one enjoys the new daily article.

http://ocremix.org/album/33/25yearlegend-a-legend-of-zelda-indie-game-composer-tribute

January 22, 2012

SWTOR, $200mil, 6yrs and 4 continents

Its funny how money changes ones per­spec­tive. If you had asked me to guess what I though TOR cost to develop I would have grossly under val­ued the devel­op­ment costs actu­ally involved which totaled $200 mil­lion. The time frame isnt so shock­ing, I wouldve guess roughly 3 years from start to fin­ish but the 6 years that it took to develop TOR really isnt a shocker for all the con­tent and detail it offers. What I really wouldnt have guessed is that this game came to life due to the efforts of 800 devel­op­ers spread across 4 con­ti­nents. It should also be noted that Lucas Arts gave Bioware free reign over their stu­dios and resources step­ping in only minimally.

These high num­bers though will have an effect on the gamers per­spec­tive of the game, it shouldnt but it does of course. For those of you who are still in a cool down period for hav­ing to wait so long or that it didnt meet cer­tain expec­ta­tions this news prob­a­bly isnt help­ing your rage. With a $200mil bud­get, over 800 devs and 6 damn years you might be think­ing that youre being sub­jected to a prime waste of resources.

For those of you wear­ing a dia­per so you dont waste pre­cious sec­onds that could be used for epic galac­tic ass­kick­ery this news may put it into per­specitive for you. $200mil bud­get, over 800 devs and 6 yrs has brought the magic your life was miss­ing. With such mas­sive resources no won­der the game man­ages to con­tin­u­ously blow your friggen mind.

Any­way you slice it TOR was a mas­sive under­tak­ing that required mas­sive resources to bring the vision of Star Wars to life in an envi­ron­ment that scales to the Star Wars universe.

What are your thoughts know­ing that you are play­ing a 200 mil­lion dol­lar game that took 800 devs 6 years to develop? do you feel such resources were squan­dered or is TOR the cham­pion love child of a huge bud­get and incred­i­ble man power?

January 21, 2012

Life IS better with games!

Truly life is bet­ter with games in them or if you splice life with games. Thanks to Scro­tuskilmystr, this made my week­end. Some of you may have seen it before but if not this is just fur­ther evi­dence games are great. Have a great week­end every­one and check out the site on Mon­day for a brand new fea­ture article.

January 19, 2012

Resident Evil 6

Res­i­dent Evil is on its way back and it would appear that its going back to its viral roots with a mas­sive infected zom­bie out­break rather than con­tinue with the cult mind con­trol RE4&5 brought us. Dont get me wrong I loved both RE4 and 5 but I wasnt ter­ri­bly impressed with the cult fac­tor, Im glad to see that its going back to its roots as a true zom­bie game. Heres the debut trailer, Enjoy!

January 19, 2012

Demo’s finally hit the Nintendo 3DS eShop

Nin­tendo has finally caught up with the rest of the Indus­try today as the 3DS has its first demo avail­able for down­load via the eShop. Res­i­dent Evil: Rev­e­la­tions is the first of sev­eral demo’s com­ing from the big N. The demo is slightly hefty; the weird thing is you can only open the demo 30 times. Now if you left the appli­ca­tion open, play it all you like. I grabbed the demo this after­noon and I must say, it feels like sur­vival hor­ror again. The tone feels like the first three games in the series while the game play feels like the last two. The 3D is not par­tic­u­larly great but at least it’s not eye strain induc­ing.  The con­trols are spot on with aim­ing either over the shoul­der or in first per­son and Jill’s move­ment is slow but brings back the ten­sion this series used to enjoy. The game is shap­ing up nicely and gives yet another great rea­son to own a 3DS. The demo is up for free on the 3DS eShop go give it a go for your­self enjoy the screens below.

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