1P Start

At the beginning of last month, rumours emerged of Microsoft developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360 in an attempt to grab a piece of Nintendo’s obviously huge market. The company has already started this strategy by releasing the Xbox Arcade pack, a cheap and cheerful package to appeal to casual gamers everywhere.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of months, here’s a short rehash of the rumours. MTV News (not who I’d normally look to for gaming news, or any other news for that matter) reported that an inside Microsoft source has revealed the plans for an almost exact replica of the Wii Remote. It looks almost identical, although is thought to have a microphone included for future games similar to Singstar.

At the time, Microsoft refused to comment on the speculation, as they do with almost every rumour, but Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has chosen to speak out.

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Wii Fit is due to be released in the USA this week, first in the Nintendo World Store on May 19th before being available everywhere on May 21st. The game, which is already available in Europe and Asia ships with a balance board peripheral which allows gamers to do exercises, and yoga, and even weight themselves using the software.

The game, or lifestyle device as some are more accurately calling it has already divided opinion. Hardcore gamers more in to their first person shooters and RPGs have written it off as not even a game, and the Wii itself as not a true player in this generation’s console war. While others thinks the Wii and games such as Wii Fit are bringing more people in to gaming, and opening up the hobby to a more diverse range of people.

Wal-Mart were even marketing the game as the perfect Mother’s Day gift by offering $10 gift card to anyone who pre-ordered the game by May 10th. A Teacher in Canada even tested the game out as a possible alternative to more traditional forms of exercise, with surprising results.

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How do you like to play Halo 3 on the Xbox 360? With friends? With lots of cold beers and snacks? How about with some prostitutes? The latter may seem to be a bit obtuse, but that is exactly how a 13 year old kid from Texas and his friends decided to play the game.

Ralph Hardy ordered an extra credit card in his father’s name, and then went on a $30,000 spending spree with a number of his friends. The credit card company sent out the card after the kid managed to answer a series of security questions correctly.

Hardy was caught after buying an Xbox 360, a load of games, and then booking in to a hotel room with his mates to play the games. After ordering snack food such as Dr Pepper, Fritos and Oreos, the boys asked the hotel management “where they could score some chicks and were willing to pay”.

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Electronic Arts desperately wants to acquire Take-Two Interactive. It already wanted it before Grand Theft Auto IV was released but now that the game has made $500 million in its first week on sale, and proved once again the value of the franchise, EA are even keener.

Take-Two, who publish the Grand Theft Auto games, have already rejected a bid from EA back in February. So now EA are going hostile, and have offered the shareholders a $2.1 billion all cash offer. The shareholders have until May 16th to consider the bid and decide if it’s enough to warrant a mass sell out or not.

The problem is, EA doesn’t actually have $2.1 billion in the bank, and has had to take out a $1 billion loan to cover the costs of the investment if and when it happens. The huge financing will come from Morgan Stanley, the bank of Nova Scotia, and several other financial organisations.

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In the latest edition of The Official X-Box Magazine a rumor that should get both fans of Bioshock and fans of the classic PC (and PSX) game X-Com: UFO Defense in a tizzy. Bioshock creator Ken Levine is rumored to be working with 2K Games on a sequel to the space alien fighting game. If any franchise needs an awesome revival, it’s X-Com: UFO Defense.

If you’ve never played X-Com: UFO Defense (or unfortunate enough to play it’s lame sequels), I can’t stress to you how awesome that first game was. Not only did you have to fight aliens in super intense (and incredibly difficult) turned based combat with a team of badass commandos (that you recruited and trained), but you also controlled funding for research and were the sole hope for humanity against the threat of death by alien invaders.

It’s what dreams are made out of… awesome dreams.

Last week saw various media types getting themselves in a tizzy over the so-called clash between the release of Grand Theft Auto IV last Tuesday, and the long awaited Iron Man movie starring Robert Downey Jr. The argument was that the timing of the multi-format GTA 4 coming out was going to play havoc with the box office takings for the film, as millions of gamers would be too busy indoors playing the game to venture out to the cinema to see the film.

And surprise surprise, here we are the week after, and as well as GTA 4 selling in phenomenal numbers, the Iron Man movie did spectacularly well, taking $100 million in the States, and $200 million elsewhere in the world. The movie also ended up being the 10th largest opening movie ever, and the second biggest ever original (non-sequel) film, just behind the first Spider-Man movie.

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Over on 1up a couple of guys with one of the coolest jobs in the world (one of them is in charge of overseeing interactive game content done with Marvel’s characters) have a blog where they intermittently post articles of high interest to geeks like me. One (planned) series of articles of most interest to me is the history of Iron Man in video games. The first post and only one that is up right now deal with Iron Man’s appearances in such classics as Captain America and the Avengers and Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems. Okay, I’m sure you never heard of the second game, unless your a true comic book loving video game geek. I hope they keep up with the posts, I love comics and history so this is a marriage made in heaven.

Link: Here’s a super awesome review of Captain America and the Avengers. Yes, it is a shameless plug. Also, the sketch is from my buddy Jacon who is an awesome artist and funny guy. Check out his stuff here.

Grand Theft Auto IV is still three days away from release, and the vast majority of people won’t have yet had the chance to sample the game. But that doesn’t seem to be stopping no-nothing do-gooders from calling for the game to be banned, before it even hits the streets, and before any of them have even played it.

We’ve already seen adverts for the game being pulled off buses in Chicago due to a biased piece of reporting from Fox News, and now more opinionated people have decided to butt in.

Parents Television Council president Tim Winter started the invented outrage by declaring:

“This brutally violent videogame must be kept out of the hands of children, and we are calling on all major retailers to reconsider any decisions to sell this game.”

The next day, California state senator Leland Yee sent a message to parent urging them to “avoid (the) latest ultraviolent videogame.”

Now hang on a minute Mr. Winter and Mr. Yee, how do you know the game is going to be brutally or ultra violent? You haven’t played it, so you are just guessing based on the old iterations. Now okay, GTA IV is going to have some scenes of violence in it, but then it is a game about criminality, and violence is an unfortunate part of that. We all wish it wasn’t obviously, but life is unfair.

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Nintendo are having a good year. That’s a slight understatement but it’s the main thrust of the latest press release to come from the company’s headquarters, as it reports a massive surge in profits for the last twelve months.

Net profit rose 47.7% to a record high over the last fiscal year, after the phenomenal success of the Wii and DS, both of which have exceeded expectations, and beaten all rivals in their field.

The net profit for the Nintendo group as a whole was ¥257.34 billion, or $2.5 billion. So just a slightly successful year for the Kyoto, Japan based company then.

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There is currently a spate of violence occurring in Chicago which has seen 37 people shot, 2 stabbed and 7 dead according to CBS News. Why is this happening? Well, who knows, maybe maybe its gang violence, the weather, or just a spate of unconnected crimes. Or maybe its because some poster adverts for Grand Theft Auto IV have started appearing on the sides of buses in the city to promote the Rockstar game due out next week?

Now, of course, I don’t believe for a minute that the last option has anything to do with the violence, as tragic and depressing as it is, is occurring, but that’s because I’m someone who has two brain cells. Unfortunately, Fox News doesn’t, and the local affiliate in Chicago brought up the adverts during a report in to the violence.

Instead of ignoring the scaremongering, the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) decided to remove all of the adverts. Just like that, they gave in, over one ludicrous claim as to the effect they were having on the city.

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Over on File Front I saw an interesting post pointing out some candy cigarettes that have Sega’s mascot Sonic the Hedgehog on the package.

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Wow, this is a game I never expected to see happen. Imagine all your favourite Mortal Kombat characters, my personal favourite was always Raiden, going up against all your favourite DC Comics characters, you can’t beat Batman for a dark superhero. Now put that all in a video game and watch the results… pretty awesome huh?

Well, it’s happening, and Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Comics will be coming to a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 near you this Fall after Midway officially announced the game in Las Vegas this week. They also issued a press release, and some early preview game footage that you can see embedded below:

As excited as I am at the prospect of this game, and I am, honest, I’m also pretty disappointed by that footage, as it looks ropey at best. Superhero games are notoriously difficult to get right, and it doesn’t look like Midway are anywhere near achieving a good result at this point in time. Let’s hope the three months of development time they have left improves the feel of the game.

I’m also disappointed by the rumours circulating which indicate that there will be “no fatalities and little-to-no blood” in the game. That’s not me saying it, but rather a former Midway employee who decided to leak the info to Kotaku.

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Microsoft has seen sales of the Xbox 360 falling badly over the last few months, with 2008 proving so far to be the year of the PS3, and the Wii of course. So what to do? Why, try and steal your competitor’s market of course.

We’ve already seen the Xbox 360 getting dropped in price, and the Arcade pack released in order to cater to the less well off consumers who snapped up the Wii in droves.

Now, according to a company source talking to MTV, Microsoft are also going to muscle in on the motion control elements of the Wii and are busy developing a Wii Remote style controller for the Xbox 360.

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April Fools Day is always a torturous day for gamers, with a huge amount of fake or prank stories doing the rounds on the Internet. And this year has been no exception.

Here are some of the best from around the World Wide Web:

This YouTube video supposedly shows a mash-up between Assassins Creed and Metal Gear Solid 4. It’s rubbish of course, but at least we get to see some new gameplay footage from MGS4!

Blizzard announced a new hero class for World of Warcraft. Called the Bard class, this hero wields a plastic guitar and rocks their way through the game. This is in addition to the game coming to consoles, although as its only available for the Atari 2600 to start with, it’s not really that exciting news.

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Well, not quite on its own, but it can at least be the catalyst for a new baby to make its way in to the world.

A couple have met over Xbox Live, fallen in love, married, and now had their first baby together.

I’m sure this kind of thing has happened in PC gaming before, and also virtual world games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft, but I’ve never heard about it happening in quite the same way as this one occurred.

Stacy and Mike Figueroa met while playing Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Lockdown over the Xbox Live network. Hatred rather than love for each other was the first emotion to surface though, with the pair starting off as online enemies, in different factions of the game.

After months of shooting each other, they ended up becoming team-mates, and then a little after that, they fell in love.

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