Saturday, 2 February 2008
Rumour: Gears of War 2 now official?
By Mike Bowden - 01 Feb 08
Rumours, rumours and even more rumours: this is one that just won't go away however. Yes, Gears of War 2 speculation has reared it's ugly head again and this time it's because Gamepro magazine claims to have an exclusive (don't they all)?, and proudly emboss the Gears of War 2 logo on their front cover.
Whether or not this is all hokum remains to bee seen. I'm scans will be up all over the net once it comes out on the 12th February. However, while you wait, check out below...
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Condemned 2: Bloodshot Multiplayer Revealed!
by: Evan Fecko
January 25, 2008
Taking the Condemned universe to a new and even more intense level, Condemned 2: Bloodshot will introduce a variety of bone-chilling online multiplayer modes for up to eight players including:
Crime Scene:
Crime Scene is an innovative round-based competition to find and protect valuable evidence within the Condemned universe. One team will use their forensic tools to track and scan the evidence while the opposing team will do everything in their power to keep the evidence hidden and protected.
Bum Rush:
Bum Rush is a team-based race against time. With three minutes before one team can safely be evacuated, players must hold off an onslaught of attacks by the other team until the timer runs out in order to stand a chance of survival.
Deathmatch:
Deathmatch is the classic free-for-all mode. Players can use every weapon they can find to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible in this melee battle royale. The player with the highest score at the end of the time limit wins.
Team Deathmatch:
Team Deathmatch is the team-based version of the classic free-for-all mode. Working together, players pick up weapons from the environment and fight off as many enemies as possible before the clock runs down. The team with the highest score after the time limit wins.
January 25, 2008
Taking the Condemned universe to a new and even more intense level, Condemned 2: Bloodshot will introduce a variety of bone-chilling online multiplayer modes for up to eight players including:
Crime Scene:
Crime Scene is an innovative round-based competition to find and protect valuable evidence within the Condemned universe. One team will use their forensic tools to track and scan the evidence while the opposing team will do everything in their power to keep the evidence hidden and protected.
Bum Rush:
Bum Rush is a team-based race against time. With three minutes before one team can safely be evacuated, players must hold off an onslaught of attacks by the other team until the timer runs out in order to stand a chance of survival.
Deathmatch:
Deathmatch is the classic free-for-all mode. Players can use every weapon they can find to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible in this melee battle royale. The player with the highest score at the end of the time limit wins.
Team Deathmatch:
Team Deathmatch is the team-based version of the classic free-for-all mode. Working together, players pick up weapons from the environment and fight off as many enemies as possible before the clock runs down. The team with the highest score after the time limit wins.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
GTA IV Hitting Streets Worldwide on April 29
Rockstar Games has announced that latest installment in its multi-million selling Grand Theft Auto series will be released worldwide for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on April 29.
Xbox Turns Q2 Profit
Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division is now officially halfway towards a full year of Xbox profitability
The Redmond, Wash.-based Xbox house said Thursday that for the second fiscal quarter ended December 31, the EDD’s operating income reached $357 million, up from a $302 million loss for the same period a year ago.
Operating income within the division increased during the quarter primarily due to increased revenue, decreased cost of revenue and decreased marketing and sales expenses.
Lower manufacturing costs for Xbox 360 hardware drove the cost of revenue down $523 million, or 22 percent during the quarter.
Total revenues for the EDD, which houses Xbox, PC games and Zune, among other businesses, were $3.06 billion, up from $3 billion for the same period a year prior.
Overall, Microsoft posted fiscal Q2 sales of $16.37 billion (up 30 percent year-on-year), operating income of $6.48 billion (up 87 percent) and earnings per share of 50 cents (up 92 percent).
Microsoft attributed EDD’s increased revenue to Xbox 360. Xbox 360 game sales, Xbox Live revenues and Xbox accessory sales partially offset lower Xbox 360 console sales, according to the company.
“We shipped 4.3 million and 6.1 million Xbox 360 consoles in the second quarter and first half of fiscal year 2008, respectively, as compared to 4.4 million and 5.4 million Xbox 360 consoles in the second quarter and first half of fiscal year 2007, respectively,” the firm said. Microsoft said in early January the Xbox 360 had sold 17.7 million units globally, life-to-date.
“…For the remainder of fiscal year 2008,we expect revenue to increase due to increased sales of Xbox 360 consoles and related games, accessories, and services.”
In 2007, Microsoft's EDD posted a Q1 profit of $165 million.
Prior to this fiscal year, Microsoft had pledged that the Xbox division would finally turn a profit for an entire year, a notable change for a division known as a money-loser.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Burnout Paradise: Xbox 360 Vs PlayStation 3
Burnout Paradise is the most anticipated game of January 2008 and rightfully so. Find out why we love it by heading over to our Burnout Paradise review, but read on for the definitive verdict on which version is the best. We're going to compare the two games in four key areas (Graphics, Sound, Gameplay and Multiplayer) so you know if you should buy the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 version
link below
http://www.videogamer.com/features/article/22-01-2008-267.html
uk console vg chart week ending jan 20th
UK:
DS: 59,337
Wii: 41,178
360: 16,635
PS3: 13,278
PSP: 9,383
PS2: 7,178
Virtua Fighter 5 Update Available
SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced it has released a new downloadable patch for Virtua Fighter 5,
by: Jason Solorzano
January 16, 2008
SEGA Europe Ltd. today announced it has released a new downloadable patch for Virtua Fighter 5, the critically acclaimed arcade fighting game now available for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. The patch will include a number of gameplay additions and enhancements including:
Some characters will now be able to select costume-specific pants in alternate costumes, for example equipping Costume A pants in Costume B.
Replays of online battles can now be saved.
One additional item per character (appear as "Downloaded item" in Costume settings/Item edit dialog).
Gamer pictures will now be shown in online battles.
After winning the World Tournament Final, it's now more likely that rivals you have not defeated will be playing in arcades.
When someone joins an online match, you can now see their connection quality.
Various fixes for minor bugs, including a texture bug.
Easier sorting of rankings.
Rematches in Online VS. Player Matches now possible even when the players haven't added their opponent to their friend list
The Xbox 360 version of Virtua Fighter 5 is based on the latest arcade version update and features both analog stick and D-pad control, as well as vibration support. The game also includes an improved Quest mode featuring more CPU rivals, items, and emblems for character customisation. The DOJO mode has added features including leaderboards, training move settings, improved throw escape training, and the option to change your opponent's position and recovery type. These all work to create a more refined DOJO mode where players can improve their fighting strategy.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Analyst: PS3 Install Base Too Small, Blu-ray to Smash HD-DVD
The install base of the PlayStation 3 is too small for some key developers' tastes, say analysts with theSimExchange, and the PS3 being the lowest-selling game system during the 2007 holiday season isn't likely to help matters.
In October and November, the first-person shooter market -- which analyst Jesse Divnich says can only support two premier titles at once under normal circumstances-- was dominated by The Orange Box and Halo 3 on Xbox 360, while November and December were dominated by Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. On the PS3, however, The Orange Box saw particularly low sales.
"Unfortunately, the PS3 has such a small install base it is unable to successfully support two first-person-shooters in the same month," said Divnich. "This theory will likely hold true for other great titles under the same genre, with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction cannibalizing each other's sales in December."
TheSimExchange is an online virtual stock market in which gamers, developers and investors trade stock to predict how games will sell.
Divnich did note that as the PS3 install base grows, Sony's console will be able to support more than one standout title per genre. That date may be a ways off, however, as theSimExchange shows PS3 sales being exceeded by every other current-gen gaming system, including the Nintendo DS (of course) and Sony's own PSP (PlayStation Portable).
The weaker-than-the-rest sales will have little effect on the Blu-ray format, however, as theSimExchange anticipates Blu-ray Disc as a format will handily defeat HD-DVD, particularly in light of Warner Bros.' announcement to publish its movies exclusively on Blu-ray effective June 1.
Not surprisingly, the defeat of HD-DVD is not predicted to effect sales of Xbox 360, whose HD-DVD player is strictly an add-on, not an internal drive.
In October and November, the first-person shooter market -- which analyst Jesse Divnich says can only support two premier titles at once under normal circumstances-- was dominated by The Orange Box and Halo 3 on Xbox 360, while November and December were dominated by Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3. On the PS3, however, The Orange Box saw particularly low sales.
"Unfortunately, the PS3 has such a small install base it is unable to successfully support two first-person-shooters in the same month," said Divnich. "This theory will likely hold true for other great titles under the same genre, with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction cannibalizing each other's sales in December."
TheSimExchange is an online virtual stock market in which gamers, developers and investors trade stock to predict how games will sell.
Divnich did note that as the PS3 install base grows, Sony's console will be able to support more than one standout title per genre. That date may be a ways off, however, as theSimExchange shows PS3 sales being exceeded by every other current-gen gaming system, including the Nintendo DS (of course) and Sony's own PSP (PlayStation Portable).
The weaker-than-the-rest sales will have little effect on the Blu-ray format, however, as theSimExchange anticipates Blu-ray Disc as a format will handily defeat HD-DVD, particularly in light of Warner Bros.' announcement to publish its movies exclusively on Blu-ray effective June 1.
Not surprisingly, the defeat of HD-DVD is not predicted to effect sales of Xbox 360, whose HD-DVD player is strictly an add-on, not an internal drive.
Turok Demo Available on Xbox Live Today
Turok is an epic, story-driven first-person shooter set on a dark, mysterious planet in the future. Players take on the role of Joseph Turok, a former black ops commando, now part of an elite special forces squad, known as Whiskey Company, which is on a mission to take down a war criminal – Turok’s former mentor, Roland Kane. While Whiskey Company is traveling to the genetically altered planet inhabited by Kane and his soldiers, Whiskey Company’s ship is shot down. Turok must use his elite military training to elude Kane’s well-trained army, known as Mendel-Gruman, and the ravenous, unpredictable dinosaurs, huge insects and other massive creatures that populate the dangerous environment. Turok’s mission? Survive at all costs.
Size: 1.17 GB
Size: 1.17 GB
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Samsung LE52F96BD 52in LED LCD TV REVIEW
With so many big screens with similar model names in its massive flat TV range these days, you could be forgiven for not even noticing that Samsung has now added the LE52F96BD to its big-screen offering. But this would be a mighty shame, for the reality is that this TV is anything but ‘more of the same' from the Korean mega-brand. In fact, it's arguably the most revolutionary LCD TV that's so far passed through our doors. Honestly; we're not just exaggerating in some desperate bid to keep you reading right to the end of the review (for a change?!). Its genuinely ground-breaking nature is just a simple fact, no more, no less.
Essentially, it's all about the backlight. Now when you put it like this, I'll grant you that this Samsung's ‘big feature' doesn't sound all that exciting. But maybe if we point out that normal LCD TVs' static, constantly on backlights are responsible for the vast majority of problems LCD technology has with showing video, then you might start to get an inkling of where we're headed.
Take, for instance, normal LCD technology's problems reproducing a convincing black level response. This is largely down to the fact that the need to keep a single backlight shining at all times means that even pixels that should be dark end up with a bit of the backlight creeping into them, resulting in the greying over effect we so commonly talk about in our reviews.
The always-on stationary backlight also has a negative impact on the presentation of motion. For the fact that the light can't ‘scan' like good old CRT technology means moving images are presented as a series of static frames rather than truly fluid, a situation that causes blur since your eye's natural response is to track the average motion from one frame to the next.
As you've probably started to suss from everything we've said so far, the big trick of the LE52F96BD is that it addresses such backlight-related issues head on, by completely doing away with the solitary, constant backlight approach. Instead it lights its pixels using an array of LED backlights, all individually controllable.
The advantages of this approach are immediately clear. For instance, black levels should be much deeper, since LED-driven screens can completely remove light from dark picture areas, stopping the potential for light seepage to cause unwanted greyness. In fact, Samsung claims the LED system allows the LE52F96BD to produce a jaw-dropping - or should that be eyebrow-raising! - contrast ratio of 500,000:1.
What's more, having an array of controllable lights opens up the possibility of recreating the scanning effect so key to CRT's immaculate handling of motion. And as a final ‘bonus' benefit, LED light sources tend to produce a noticeably wider, richer colour palette than standard lamp types.
Itching though we are to find out if all this fine theory has been turned into perfect practice at the first time of asking by the LE52F96BD, we've got a little more groundwork to go over first.
For instance, you really need to know how remarkably pretty this TV is for such a gargantuan effort - just in case you hadn't picked up on this from the pictures we're running.
It's also phenomenally well connected. Heading things up are three HDMIs all made to the V1.3 specification, which is to say they are compatible with such v1.3-exclusive features as automatic lip-synching and Deep Colour (the as yet unseen but theoretically great system for delivering richer colours from specially mastered HD sources).
Also unusual is a USB 2.0 jack via which the TV can play MP3 and JPEG file formats, with other key jacks including a D-Sub PC port and a component video input.
Inevitably given its cutting edge status the LE52F96BD is a full HD screen, complete with 1:1 pixel mapping mode for the purest possible portrayal of 1080-line HD sources and 1080p/24fps support.
The picture processing at the LE52F96BD's heart is Samsung's Digital Natural Image engine which, like most rival systems, focuses its attention on improving colour saturations/tones and fine detailing, as well as providing further boosts to black levels and motion control.
You also get Samsung's Movie Plus mode, with its bold but ultimately flawed (and therefore best switched off) attempt to make objects move across the screen more fluidly; and the equally problematic Edge Enhancer, with its tendency to over-stress rather than improve edges. Again, we'd suggest you turn this off.
There are still a few other picture tweaks at your disposal that we could mention, but frankly we've restrained ourselves for far too long already. It's time to see just what a difference LED makes. And the answer is: a lot. In fact, if I was still five year's old I might even say a very lot.
Take black levels, for instance. For once we have an LCD TV that really can produce a nearly true representation of black, with practically no trace of the misty greyness we're now so accustomed to seeing. This makes dark scenes like the opening shots of Ocean's Thirteen (on Blu-ray) look spectacularly dynamic and, for want of a better word, cinematic. Partly because the range between the screen's peak whites and deepest blacks is so prodigious, but also because the effortless darkness portrayed contains more subtle detailing than you can usually make out, and as such helps pictures look more full of depth.
We'd expect black levels this good to also help a TV's colours, and so it proves with the LE52F96BD. But that's only part of the story, since as well as enjoying more natural tones even during dark scenes because of the black response, the LED light source also seems to produce markedly richer colours than we're used to seeing from LCD TVs.
Turning next to the potential motion-handling benefit of LED technology, again the LE52F96BD doesn't disappoint. There's noticeably less blur over the swinging swords of King Leonidas' men during the HD DVD of 300 than we'd normally see, for instance.
It has to be said that LED technology doesn't suddenly make LCD motion completely perfect; there's still a sense that some resolution is lost where objects pass across the screen. But it's certainly a heck of an improvement.
It's pleasing to note, too, that nothing about the LED system appears to detract from the picture's general sharpness. The 52in screen revels in eking every last drip of fine detail from quality HD moments like, well, pretty much anything on the BBC's Planet Earth, as recorded onto a Sky HD box.
So how come, you're probably wondering, the score for picture at the top of this review only reads a 9, not a 10? There are a number of small reasons. First and worst, the LE52F96BD's picture doesn't bear viewing from much of an angle; from even as little as 30 degrees or so you'll start to notice pretty serious loss of black level.
The set is also rather uncomfortable with standard definition sources, tending to exaggerate any noise they may contain, and leaving skin looking a bit plasticky. Finally, just occasionally a slight greenish undertone creeps into dark scenes , seemingly without warning. But I actually found that I'd pretty much stopped noticing this by the end of my time (a few days) with the LE52F96BD.
Verdict
So the LE52F96BD's images aren't totally perfect. But they're remarkably close to it for what is, after all, a debut product based on a new technology. In fact, this has to be one of the finest technology debuts ever in this reviewer's humble opinion, raising the very real prospect that one day LED backlighting just might become the default system of choice for the LCD industry as a whole. So long as they can get the price down a bit, that is…
Reminder Samsung 500,000 contrast ratio
Kicking off proceedings is the new F9 series, consisting of two models - the 52in LE-52F96BD and 70in LE-70F96BD - offering full HD (1920 x 1080) and incorporating what Samsung terms LED SmartLighting.
By using multiple LEDs for the backlight instead of regular CCFLs - and thereby being able to better control the brightness - Samsung has, it says, been able to engineer a dynamic 500,000:1 contrast ratio, producing, from what we saw, an image with searing blacks and deep blues.
The contrast difference between this and a traditional set positioned alongside was immediately noticeable. A wider colour gamut also helps with finer colour reproduction.
Connections-wise, it's pretty standard fare, with three HDMI sockets and USB2.0 as well. LED backlit displays have taken time to come to market and Samsung will be charging somewhere in the region of £3,000 for the 52in model. No mention is made of 100Hz support, though.
Samsung is also officially launching its F8 LCD series, available in 40in and 46in panels and supporting 100Hz to reduce that most dreaded of LCD failings - motion blur. The F8 sets are 1080p-compatible and have claimed dynamic contrast ratios of 25,000:1.
That's what i call a blu ray player!
Denon's new high end Blu-ray Disc player
Denon recently announced their new high end Blu-ray Disc player, the DVD-3800BDCI. This monster is the first player to feature support for BD-ROM Version 1.1 which, among other things, allows for playback of picture-in-picture content. The DVD-3800BDCI also features the Silicon Optix Realta chipset, which provides enhanced video performance with upconversion and IP scaling to 1080p.
Denon Electronics, a world leader in high-performance home entertainment products, today announced the upcoming introduction of two groundbreaking DVD products, the new reference-standard DVD-3800BDCI BD-ROM Profile 1 version 1.1 Blu-ray Disc Player and the DVD-2500BTC BD-ROM Profile 1 version 1.1 Blu-ray Disc Transport.
The DVD-3800BDCI is the world's first BD-ROM Profile 1 version 1.1 Blu-ray Disc Player from a Blu-Ray Disc Association member featuring the acclaimed 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta chipset. It provides users with the highest resolution high-definition video available today via HDMI™ connection, as well as the ultimate in audio performance, including high-definition audio decoding and DDSC-HD audio output. The DVD-2500BTCI outputs audio and video signals and requires a connected audio/video receiver to do the decoding.
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