Microsoft playing Nintendo’s game?

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With Microsoft’s announcement of the Xbox 360 Arcade, the anticipated device looks to be changing how the Xbox targets consumers.

According to a Microsoft representative, the company feels that “the timing is right to really focus and turn the spotlight on our family content and, yeah, we feel great.”

Believe it or not, Microsoft has inked a deal with Warner Bros. to bring HD Looney Tunes to the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, and more games designed with children in mind will be coming down the pike with the help of this new console.

Xbox 360 Arcade

(Credit: Microsoft)

While I applaud Microsoft for making the jump to children’s games and attempting to attract the all-too-evasive “nontraditional gamer,” isn’t it playing a game that Nintendo already knows the secret to? And if so, is Microsoft barking up the wrong tree?

It may surprise you, but the answer is simply no. Microsoft is onto something with this new focus and whether or not you are a Nintendo zealot to the end, you need to realize that Microsoft may start attracting the younger crowd more effectively than you think.

Historically speaking, there is no denying the fact that Nintendo has controlled the family gaming market. With such classics as Mario and Donkey Kong (among many others), the company has single-handedly taken control of the casual gamer. And with the release of the Wii, it has enjoyed some success in attracting those “nontraditional gamers” by doing something other companies haven’t been able to do: creating a unique gaming experience.

Regardless of your opinion of Microsoft, it is not a dumb company when it needs to make solid gaming decisions. Realizing it cannot compete with the Wii on purely unique gameplay, the company has found a new way–enlist the help of popular child franchises and offer games that will appeal to the family. And while I’m not a firm believer in this idea of bringing an entire family into the gaming mix, I do believe it can attract at least one or two people in any given family, and effectively take a bite out of Nintendo’s stranglehold on the market.

In essence, Microsoft and Nintendo are trying to appeal to the same market in two distinctly different ways. Microsoft wants to attract consumers by offering well-known franchises and providing the new gaming crowd with a host of fun and entertaining games. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s main selling point this time around is its hardware. If the Wii was just another gaming console with old-style controls, we’d be calling it a Gamecube. And if memory serves me correctly, the Gamecube was quite a flop.

Unfortunately for Nintendo, I simply don’t believe hardware will take the day in the bitter battle for the family. Sure, it has been successful in bringing a unique experience to homes. But as I’ve mentioned before, it simply doesn’t have the software behind it to overcome the rest of the industry.

Microsoft is in an enviable position. With a strong library of games that appeal to mature gamers, it can now focus on the relatively untapped family market. And while I think it’ll be a tough nut to crack, look for Microsoft to make some headway this holiday season and capture market share from Nintendo going forward.

The change will not come overnight. But rest assured, if Microsoft can follow through on its promises and Nintendo remains complacent, look for Microsoft to become the “nontraditional” charmer.

Originally posted at The Digital Home.

Universal unbricker for all PSPs

Posted by multippt

Dark_Alex (yes, the same person who “announced his retirement” a few months ago) has released a new universal unbricker for both the new and old PSPs. This means that you can save your PSP slim as well in the event that you did something you are not supposed to.

The unbricker will downgrade/upgrade your PSP to 3.71 M33 (custom firmware; this firmware works on PSP and PSP slim). You can further downgrade the original PSP (not the PSP slim) using Pandora’s battery. The unbricker makes use of Pandora’s battery.

Note that this unbricker works depending on the extent of bricking. For severe cases where dumping of the original PSP’s firmware is not possible, the PSP still remains bricked. Note that you need an original firmware dump of the PSP; using others will result in a brick. Thus the unbricker should be used with care.

Via QJ, Dark-Alex

NY’s ‘Halo 3′ launch was no riot, but it was close

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A block away at the Best Buy store on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street, those waiting for the launch of Microsoft’s Halo 3 video game couldn’t have cared less.

They had their own epilepsy-inducing lights, after all. New York’s Halo 3 debut stopped short of pyrotechnics, but it was over the top in just about every other way.

“George Clooney who?” one person near the head of the line joked when he heard the gossip. Like most of the queuers who’d shown up at the Best Buy store for the official launch celebration of the final installment of the Xbox 360 game trilogy, he was young, male and sporting a Halo 3 T-shirt that had been given away as part of the festivities.

“We’re more famous than him tonight,” a nearby line-waiter added, gesturing at one of the many flat-panel TV screens that had been set up in the windows of the Best Buy store, projecting previews of the title, interspersed with live footage of numerous NFL players from the New York Giants and New York Jets inside the store, squaring off against one another on Halo 3. For this crowd, Clooney couldn’t hold a candle to Master Chief, the iconic Halo protagonist who’s been blasting away at bad guys on TV screens since the original title launched in 2001.

An enormous spotlight beamed up over Fifth Avenue, and full-out lighting and sound equipment–along with plenty of enormous TV screens–dominated the ground scene. A team of Mountain Dew minions were walking around with trays of plastic shot glasses containing a seemingly endless supply of samples of its Halo 3-branded energy drink, “Game Fuel.” There was a guy in a Master Chief outfit, of course. Best Buy and Microsoft representatives were giving away T-shirts and other prizes to the fans who were willing to scream the loudest or wave their homemade signs (best one: “MASTER CHIEF IS MY FATHER”). And in addition to the handful of local NFL players, rappers Ludacris and Chingy and R&B singer Bobby Valentino were also on-site to try out the game for the cameras.
Click here to Play

And there were a whole lot of cameras. Microsoft dominated the myriad big-screen TVs with its in-house coverage of the launch, but video and photo crews were around from every local television network, as well as cable channels like Spike TV and G4 that target the Halo demographic. There were also more than a few video bloggers and even Justin.tv lifecaster Sarah Meyers.

At first, it seemed as though the marketing and press were going to overshadow the actual pack of fans. There simply weren’t that many of them in line earlier Monday; with fewer than 12 hours left, the line still stood at about 15 people despite the fact that 28-year-old Uche Nwachukwu, the first person to show up, had been there since 6 p.m. Sunday. Things didn’t really pick up until schools and offices had cleared out for the day, and by about 7 p.m., the line was pretty respectable. By about 10:30 p.m., it stood at several hundred.

‘Mixed reactions, mixed feelings’
All in all, the crowds and the audio-visuals made for a sight that certainly turned heads. “Some people just pass by and say ‘Oh, you’re crazy. What are you in line for?’” said 22-year-old Alex Escobar, who was near the front of the line. “Mixed reactions, mixed feelings, I don’t care. I love my Halo.”

But no one, really, was prepared for the spectacle that the Halo 3 event would turn into with about an hour to go. Best Buy and Microsoft staffers kept their swag giveaways going, insisting that the rambunctious crowds cheer at the top of their lungs in order to get a free T-shirt or bouncy ball thrown at them. The bouncy balls were a bad idea, as the line-waiters proceeded to simply hurl them at one other, but thankfully no legitimate fights ensued. (It made you wonder exactly what was in that “Mountain Dew Game Fuel.”)

Then the Mongooses arrived. With only 20 minutes left before midnight, three camo-clad bikers atop all-terrain vehicles decorated to look like the Halo 3 pimped rides showed up and incited the crowds to cheering as they performed noisy “wheelies” along the block of Fifth Avenue that had, by that time, been completely blocked off from normal traffic. They were followed by a Hummer H2 decorated in Halo 3 logos, from which an armored Master Chief ceremoniously pulled several copies of the game and took them inside for the first few buyers.
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With the combination of massive, energy-hogging audio-visuals, a Hummer, discarded plastic shot glasses and several all-terrain vehicles, it should be noted that this was embarrassingly far from being a “green” event. But that apparently wasn’t the point.

At its climax, the New York Halo 3 launch resembled some combination of a red-carpet premiere, a wild sporting event and an apocalyptic action movie. The security presence was considerable, considering the energy of the crowd. But when midnight rolled around, it was unclear whether the eager, heavily sugared and caffeinated gamers or the camera-wielding press would be the ones to start some kind of riot. Luckily, no one did.

The Halo fans, after all, had only one thing on their minds: go home, log on to their Xbox 360s and load up that new game.

“I feel awesome,” said Chris Camisa, who had been fifth in line, as he traded Xbox Live usernames with some other young gamers whom he’d met while waiting so that they could eventually meet again and blow each other’s Halo 3 incarnations to bits. “I skipped one class today, and it was well worth it,” he said.

Next to him, one of the other early line-waiters held up the limited-edition Halo 3 game that was sold to early adopters, packaged with a Master Chief helmet.

“All right!” he exclaimed, waving the box above his head. “Now I’m going to go play–all night.”

Source

Halo 3: Finish the fight

Posted by multippt

Overhyped? Yes. Worth it? Definately. Halo 3 has been launched near simultaneously across the world. During these events, special edition (legendary/unlimited) versions of the Halo 3 game would be sold. Of course, it expect to find a whole crowd at the event if you are participating it, and there is no guarantee that you’ll get the game. Halo 3 is anticipated to soar even higher than it’s predecessors, well, it may very well overtake mega blockbusters like SpiderMan 3.

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PSP Video-on-Demand Service Revealed for the UK

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The PSP, with its large, wide aspect-ratio screen and Wi-Fi support, appears to be a good combination for some sort of a video download service. Sony is finally fulfilling some of the PSP’s potential with the announcement of a special video-on-demand (VOD) service for the handheld.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe revealed at the Leipzig Games Convention its joint venture with Sky Broadcasting to provide the PSP in the UK and Ireland downloadable video. The joint venture between the two companies will be branded as “Go!”

Go! will offer similar content to that which is available through Sky Broadcasting, such as sports, entertainment, movies, music, animation and content from third-party channel brands. Also a part of the VOD system will be pay-per-view movies.

Users of the Go! system will be able to choose between downloading content directly onto their PSPs with the Wi-Fi connection or to download first to PC and then transfer onto the handheld.

“Sky and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe have complementary strengths in content, marketing and technology. Together, we’re ideally placed to make portable, on-demand TV a reality,” said James Murdoch, CEO of Sky. “Alongside our existing services for PCs and mobile phones, this is another example of how we’re working to give more choice, flexibility and control to customers. The quality of the PSP’s screen and its substantial reach among 2 million users in the UK and Ireland makes it a natural extension to our multi-platform strategy.”

Just as with the PlayStation 3 PlayTV DVR system, such a VOD feature for the PSP may never make it to North American shores. Phil Harrison of Sony Worldwide explained to Kotaku that PSP VOD would not be possible in the U.S. due to the lack of content delivered over-the-air via subscription.

Source

A downgrader that simply works - PSP

Posted by multippt

Noobz and Team C+D has conjured up something that is bound to be an eye-opener or any PSP owner out there: An unbricker that works for all PSPs [a.k.a. Pandora's Battery]. This unbricker has been proven to work, and is released by a reliable source - Noobz themselves, so don’t throw that “broken” PSP yet!

This unbricker, as its name implies, uses a custom battery [a.k.a. Jigkick battery] that is modified from a normal battery through software. It then utilizes a hidden mode in the PSP to install the firmware. This unbricker would install firmware 1.50. The unbricker works on any PSP [works on TA-82, and of course those bricked ones (since you have almost nothing to lose), unless they have been bricked because of corruption to their IDstorage keys (but those kind of bricks are very rare)], meaning it has the ability to downgrade any PSP [include those that are not bricked and are running an official or custom firmware] to firmware 1.50.

Note that you need a PSP that can run homebrew to create the unbricker, as well as the special JigKick battery (or more formally known as the service mode battery). This battery appears to do more than just power your battery - it contains a firmware within itself (hence its cost). Note that you cannot use the JigKick battery for normal usage of the PSP, hence you need a spare battery. The JigKick battery can be restored to a normal one if you want to [provided you back up the firmware of the battery]. The memory stick used as the unbricker needs to be at least 256 mb in size (you can use the memory stick after using it as a unbricker, that is if you want to [you need to format the memory stick to reset the unbricking memory stick to a normal one]).

You can get the unbricker via Noobz. Although the unbricker unbricks the PSP (and one would thus think what’s more to lose with a PSP that’s almost dead), please always, always read the readme file.

Wii sales increase in Japan; ranks three in top 10

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Sales for Nintendo Co.’s Wii increased on strong software demand in the latest sales figures from Japan.

Media Create Co. on Tues. reported that the Wii sold 65,120 units between Aug. 6 and Aug. 12, an increase from a total of 61,498 units the week prior.

Wii ranked three software titles in the top 10 game sales, including Mario Party 8, Wii Sports, and Wii Play. It ranked six titles total in the top 50 game sales for the week.

Nintendo in July recorded record profits on strong Wii sales, increasing its business year shipment forecast to 16.5 million from 14 million.

However, a recent report claims that Nintendo will delay an increase in Wii hardware production due to lack of supply components. Wii has sold more than three million units in Japan to date.