Notorious toolbag CliffB has announced the second installment of the Gears of War franchise with a November 08′ release date at the GDC. Timeshift, Call of Jaurez, Medal of Honor…wait, a History Channel shooter?
Thank goodness for COD4 (or as I like to refer to it: electronic crack). Here’s to COD not losing it’s pizzaz until November. And who knows, they might even release COD7 by then. (Not that I’m complaining)
Remember all the hoopla about XNA and the Creators Club, which would let you build and deploy games directly to your 360 console? It sounded wonderful, but the $100 annual subscription was a gotcha for most who just wanted to tinker around. Not anymore. College students can now get a FREE 12 month subscription. Even if you’re not a developer, it may just be a free ticket to legal homebrew on the 360
To get your free swag, head here. If you’re school isn’t on the list, don’t fret. Visit this link to find out how to get verified (I did it, and it was a painless process).
Update: Since my college isn’t on the list, I followed the link to get verified. My enrollment was immediately verified, and I was emailed a link to the DreamSpark download site. From there, it was one button press and I was given an Xbox Live code to claim my 12-month Creators Club subscription. Couldn’t be any easier. I have the XNA Launcher installed (separate from the temporarily available Game Launcher which is free for all). I now have the ability to install games on my 360 directly from my computer. I plan on installing XNA Sharp NES, a NES emulator created with XNA. I will report back on how that goes. Legal 360 homebrew is here! (for the masses this time, without a $100 entry fee)
I don’t quite understand Microsoft’s strategy behind this whole “play original Xbox titles on your 360.” And now this no Achievement business?
According to Major Nelson’s page…
These are the original games that were created before Xbox 360. In order to preserve the integrity of the original gaming experience they provide, they will have the features available at the time of their initial release.
Hmmmmm…isn’t that the exact thing they don’t do with XBLA games? Me smell a hint of hypocrisy in the air. I mean, why play Halo 3 when you can pay money for Halo 2? (As if everyone and their mommas don’t already have it.)
Am I the only one who was led to believe the Legendary Edition would be hard to get, and likely be sold out even before launch? Turns out, it was just a push to get more preorders. Who would have thought. Regardless, if you are looking back and wishing you got a shiny Master Chief helmet to call your own, Halo 3 Legendary Edition is Amazon’s Deal of the Day. It can be yours for $109.99 with free shipping. Get it here.
In the impossible event that Bungie and Microsoft were to part ways, (impossible need I remind you), who would take over the Halo universe?
I don’t know when the hell they got involved in the gaming industry, but some guy from MTV has made list of eleven possible candidates.
Now, I deeply question the gamer credibility of anyone affiliated with MTV, but this guy brings up some good points.
Lets see, a game that rakes in 300 million in the first week and good ol’ Billy is going to let them go? Yeahhh…
As for Epic making the next Halo…that’s just about as sacrilegious as anything gets.
[UPDATE]
THIS JUST IN…PIGS CAN FLY! The week long rumors have been confirmed. Here’s what Bungie had to say.
KIRKLAND, Wash. — Oct. 5, 2007 — Bungie and Microsoft Corp. today announced a plan for Bungie Studios, the developers of Microsoft’s “Halo†franchise, to become a privately held independent company, Bungie, LLC, in which Microsoft will hold a minority equity interest. As part of this transaction, Bungie and Microsoft have forged a deep and long-term development and publishing relationship focused on the continued success of the “Halo†franchise. It is also the intent of both parties to expand their partnership to include new IP created and owned by Bungie.
You can check out the rest of the press release here. I must warn you, it is quite emotional.
Minority equity interest huh? Didn’t see that coming!
Do you remember back in 2005, there was a stink about PGR2 and Perfect Dark Zero not running at a full 720p? They are rendered at a lower resolution, and then upscaled to 720p (or whatever resolution you have your 360 set to). So here we are, almost a full 2 years later, and the consoles biggest game even suffers from the same affliction. The smart people at the Beyond3D Forums got out their digital cameras and started counting pixels, and this is what they found:
Now before you call shenanigans, let me explain how this works. This has been confirmed using multiple stills from different sources. Here is how the math goes: Each “step” in a jaggy alias line equals one vertical pixel at the images native resolution (for angles beneath 45 degrees). In this example there are 16 steps in the jagged line. This means in the native rendering, there in a 16 pixel height difference between step 1, and step 16. This picture was taken on a 720p native LCD, running Halo 3 at “720p.” So when you have an alias line with 16 steps, there should be a physical height difference of 16 pixels. But instead here, there is an 18 pixel height difference!
What this means is the native image is only 16/18, or 88.88% (repeating), of the 720p outputted image. That means Halo 3 is only internally rendered at 640p, and the image is upscaled by the 360 to 1280×720.
More examples (on a 1080p display, so the math is slightly different)
Running at only 1138×640, that means there are 728,320 pixels. That’s a full 193,280 pixels LESS than 720p. In fact, it is even less pixels than your very average 1024×768! Hardly what anyone would consider “high-def.”
Again, these conclusions are not just being drawn from this one image. It has been verified on multiple displays running in 1:1 mode. When an LCD is running in 1:1, that means ever pixel in the image is mapped to it’s own pixel on the display. In every instance it is conclusive that Halo 3 is running at precisely 640p. This of course does not change how much fun the game is, or even how good it looks… even if we’re getting robbed of a few (hundred thousand) pixels.
On the bright side, Halo haters can no longer call Halo 3 “just Halo 2 graphics in HD.”
Side note: Before anyone accuses me of Halo hating… I’m enjoying the game thoroughly. I just think it’s sad the 360’s flagship game isn’t even running in high-def, let alone with anti-aliasing. I’m not a graphics whore though, and I still believe gameplay comes before graphics… but come on. Don’t put 720p/1080p on the box, and tell us everything on the 360 is in HD.
And not just the ending, either. The whole game. As in to download and play. This of course isn’t unusual by any means, especially with a few stores breaking street date, rebel employees, and a flood of copies on ebay. In the right hands (or wrong, depending on your perspective) that equates to a scene release or torrent.
From the looks of it, at least two groups have released Halo 3 in the past two days, with ccclx the only making it onto nforce (nfo).
Today Microsoft has released a minor update to enable support for the future “big button” remote. There is already speculation this update has something to do with Halo 3, and “the banhammer.” While there are currently hacked firmwares to play this release and others on your 360 undetected, Microsoft could once again up the ante and ban all modded consoles that connect to Live. There haven’t yet been any reports of banned consoles after todays update.
A much needed video seeing as how the Halo 3 juggernaut is now officially selling $30 faceplates and completely unnecessary missile cases. Halo 3…aka the second coming?
Ok, so for the most part, I hate this game. If you’re going to become a Guitar Hero freak and spend countless hours learning how to pretend play a plastic toy, LEARN THE FRIGGIN INSTRUMENT. It’s not that hard. When I think about the level of ease on all the songs in this game, it would seriously take a n3wb guitarist the same amount of time to learn the tabs as it does getting a 100 note streak.
It looks like they’ve added some very influential guitarists to the GHIII lineup (mainly Slash from Guns N’ Roses and now Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave) RIP.
The Rage song on the game………….BULLS ON PARADE!!! Activision has stated that players will need to “emulate some of Morello’s extremely innovative guitar-playing antics.” How he makes those freakishly amazing sounds with his geetar you axe?
I’ve met Tom once; he’s an ass. Nevertheless, this is innovation at its finest.
Who knows J-Town, maybe a Bright Eyes song for GHIV? BOOMERANG BURN!
I know this is an old issue, but only now is it affecting me (I’m selfish like that). I recently brought home a gorgeous HP w2207, wide screen 1680×1050 monitor. That translate into a 16:10 aspect ration, which differs slightly from the typical HD 16:9. Despite a variety of odd output options for VGA users, 16:10 resolutions are lacking. Looks like our friends Ana and Hana have been slacking. So Microsoft, please add some 1680×1050 support. Most all 22″ monitors run this native resolution, and 22″ monitors are the new hot ish.
Even if this doesn’t effect you now, it may some day. Sign this petition for 16:10 support. So far there are over 700 signatures. And if you think online petition’s never work, they brought you the BioShock collectors edition. While there was never a HDMI cable release, our very own 360 HDMI petition garnered a good amount of signatures and now we’ve got HDMI in the Elite and Pro. Miracles do happen!
