Tag: Games

The Price is Right

Xbox 360
£280. That’s the price for the Xbox 360 in the UK and it will be launched this year (rumoured last week in November). This is the first console that has been released so close to the USA launch – kudos to MS for doing that and also coming in at a respectable price. The £280 gets you:

  • Xbox 360 console.
  • Xbox 360 Hard Drive. 20 GB and detachable.
  • Xbox 360 Wireless Controller. Nice but has a range and battery life of up to 30 feet and 30 hours of life on two AA batteries. Not much so the battery pack and charger become essential purchases.
  • Xbox 360 Faceplate.
  • Xbox 360 Headset.
  • Xbox 360 Component HD-AV Cable. (I NEED to buy a Plasma or LCD screen)
  • Xbox Live Silver membership – who cares – I want Gold.
  • A bonus Media Remote: Included for a limited time, the integrated control centre for the entire digital experience lets consumers play DVDs, movies and music, as well as access their Windows® XP Media Centre Edition 2005-based PC’s controls with a single remote. Nice.

I reckon that’s quite a bit of hardware for £280. It would have been nicer if it came with HD-DVD but it’s still an impressive package. Not so good is that a cut-price 360 will be available for £210 that has everything except no hard disk, no headset, a wired controller and no free remote. This will be the first console to launch with different hardware options which for me means developers will code against the lowest hardware specification – no hard disk. This might not sound a big deal but the Xbox took great advantage of the hard disk so it will be disappointing if dev’s feel curtailed by this step. It also seems strange that MS have spent the last 3 years building up Xbox Live, have spent the last three months talking up the new 360 service and the online marketplace which will have lots of paid for downloadable content yet launch a console which doesn’t have the headset or the hard disk. Odd. Unless they were trying to get near to £200 and/or the price point of the soon to be launched PSP.

With around 4-6 must buy launch titles it’s going to be an expensive Christmas. I can’t wait.

 

Xbox – media hub

The Xbox 360 has been touted as a media hub for everything – plug in usb sticks and it will play music, films and pictures from it. Plug in mp3 players and they’ll work too – even the iPod. One of the most touted features was that it would work as a Media Centre Extender. So if you have Windows Media Centre the Xbox would connect to the pc and play all content – music, pics, films (including hi def) and recorded tv. Great, but I don’t have Media Centre. I tried it but because I’m not using it to record tv I found it to be a bit clunky compared to using iTunes or other software on the main pc. Meh.

However after doing a bit of digging there is hope for us non Media Centre folk. The 360 will allegedly support Windows Media Connect. This allows other devices to link to a normal XP machine and play music, videos etc in the same way as Media Centre. Looks like the software could be a bit flaky but for me this is great news as I had no intention of setting up a Media Centre machine. I’ll still be keeping the chipped Xbox and accessing media that way as the support for viewing online trailers, playing emulated games etc is superb and will not be do-able with a 360…well not until they are chipped at least. However being able to access all the media from the new machine is really cool – roll on November.

PSP Warez

A couple of months ago I posted that UMD’s (Universal Media Disc that games are supplied on for the PSP) had been cracked. Two months down the line not only can all UMD ISO’s be downloaded from the net – they can now be played from a memory stick – PSP Warez is alive and kicking. The hacks that allow this only work on firmware 1.50. Sony has released two firmware patched since 1.50 but they are not compulsory so if you want to play warez, home-brew software and emulated games on the PSP stick to version 1.5. Some games will not play unless the firmware is at the latest version. What’s the betting that GTA:Liberty City Stories will be one of them? But then again – who’ll buy the original if they can download it from the internet and play it for free from a memory stick.

Xbox 360

xbox360_mtv_snapshotA sneaky shot from the MTV shoot (which has revealed a November release in the USA) – I guess more will leak out before the program on Thursday. Rumours include:

  • Tivo like functionality
  • DVD writer
  • Media centre aware – will work with media centre pc’s (and others?)
  • Wireless controllers – crap – batteries? Shortcuts via the xbox logo in the centre (numbers around it)
  • Comes with camera – won’t be able to scratch my balls while playing Live
  • Web browsing, instant messaging – always online no matter what you are using it for i.e. playing music, watching dvd’s
  • Skinnable – buy different exterior finishes for your Xbox
  • Also plays games – allegedly. Perfect Dark Zero was one of the demo’s thats been played. Talk of Halo 2.5 and PGR3 also.

    • The new pad looks pretty good – at last there are four shoulder buttons and we’ve lost the black and white buttons which were always awkward to get to. The console is also finished in a mac white but I’m sure this is to emphasise the skinning possibilities which I’m guessing will end up being a pretty big market not just for M$ but all the third party manufacturers. New movies coming out could produce skins for the Xbox and I’m sure there will be loads of folk wanting Star Wars, Matrix and Lord of the Rings skins. I wonder if there will be something for Batman Begins? Anyway – some more leaked shots to finish off.
    xbox_controller

    xbox_media_centre

     

    UMD’s Cracked

    The PSP UMD’s have been cracked and the iso images of three games have been uploaded to the net and newsgroups. While this in itself is of no threat as there’s no way to burn the iso to a UMD disk, how long before someone figures out a way of executing a game from the memory stick in the same way that the firmware upgrade can be executed? Also interesting that the iso’s are so small – around 150Meg. Could fit a few games on my 1 Gig card.

    XBox 360?

    xbox_360
    There’s still three weeks before the MTV Xbox 360 announcement but a few sites are saying this is what the 360 will look like. Interesting. Two versions apparently as well with the higher spec one more like an XBMC 360 with a removable hard drive, web browsing, instant messaging, media player/sharing all in one device. Out this year, in Europe too. Time to start saving the pennies. More can be seen on Team Xbox.

     

    Gamics

    Stumbled on gamics.com at the weekend – comics made from game engines. At first I thought the quality would be fairly poor…typical home-brew type affair but I was wrong. The strips are great, look very cool and some of the writing is far better than I expected. If you like comics it’s worth a try. PHWComics is also worth a try – based on the Half-Life 2 engine so quality is top notch.

    Cheat Free Halo?

    From Monday Halo2 will be patched. Hopefully online play will now be glitch free. Like most online games at the moment cheaters spoiled the game for the average player. From Monday most glitches will be patched or there advantage removed. Next rankings will be reset with some new maps to follow at the end of the month. Can’t wait to get back playing this.

    PSP Games

    psp_rr1
    Having great hardware is all well and good but you need great games as well. You only need to look at the Gamecube (stunning hardware spoiled by having a few great games) to see what I mean. At launch of a new platform there is always a wide mixture of good and bad games, usually down to time pressures and lack of familiarity with the new platform. That being said the PSP has a couple of cracking games out from day one with some more to follow soon.

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