1P Start

IDG World Expo and Major League Gaming have announced the creation of a gaming tournament to be held at the E for All expo this October. The tournament will feature both MLG-sponsored Professional Gamers, as well as aspiring amateurs battling both against each other, and side-by-side for thousands of dollars in prizes.

If you have been one of the many who have either wanted to, or have actually tried to break into professional gaming, this may be your chance. I would do it, myself — but alas, I have a self-loathing issues.

Press Release after the break.

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You know, it would take a feat of extraordinary measure for batshit crazy attorney Jack Thompson to render me speechless. But somehow… some way… Thompson found a way.

So what did this man, who has previously blamed Bill Gates for the Virginia Tech shootings, attacked both Halo 3 and Bully, and even used his own child to further his insane beliefs, do to make me literally choke on my cider?

…he mailed gay porn to a US District Court Judge! I have but one question for Jack Thompson: When you dove off the deep end, did you bring a shovel with you to dig deeper once you hit bottom?

GamePolitics has a more detailed account of what happened, but I’ll boil it down for you after the break.

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I grew up listening to old punk rock. Along with bands like Black Flag, Fear, and the Dead Kennedys, the Sex Pistols were one of my favorite bands growing up. So, when I heard that the original Sex Pistols were reuniting, I just about pooed myself!

…then I discovered that they were getting back together to re-record a song for Guitar Hero III. Sadness resumes.

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For those of you who weren’t aware, the redesigned PSP Slim/Lite (depends on preference, I guess?) went on sale in Japan yesterday — and according to Gpara, the PSP Slim/Lite sold a mind-boggling 130,000 units in it’s first day.

Those Japanese really love their handhelds, I swear. As I may have mentioned here before (I’m not sure), I’ll be picking up one of those Vader PSPs when the next Battlefront game comes out. Still, though… 130,000 in a day… impressive.

If, suddenly, you’re feeling left out and want in on all the sudden PDPSPA (Public Displays of PSP Affection), I suggest you pick up the Silver PSP/Daxter/Family Guy box set. It’s well worth it.

[Gpara.com]

Sony, PSP, Japan

It seems that UK retailer Argos accidentally released copies of the biggest game release of all time, a full week before its official release date.

The UK retailer mistakenly allowed customers to purchase Halo 3 for a short time before discovering the error and immediately pulled the title from the shelves.

Microsoft has responded this afternoon by stating that it would not punish Argos for the mistake, as Microsoft believes it to have been an honest mistake. How uncharacteristically kind of Microsoft.

So kids, if you have any friends who live in the UK, and when you talk to them they brag to you about having Halo 3 before you, don’t just blow them off, because they might actually have it.

In an interview with Reuters, Sony’s Kaz Hirai had a lot to say about the PS3, ranging from how they intend to generate buzz, to rumors regarding a price drop, and a belief that Sony will ship eleven million consoles by March, 2008.

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2K Boston’s head honcho (and BioShock creator) Ken Levine has come out and defended the Factor 5 disaster Lair, speculating on the “Gamers with Jobs” podcast that Factor 5 may have been pressured into making a game solely based on the PlayStation 3’s motion-sensoring technology.

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In awesome news, independent video game blog Destructoid somehow kissed the right ass and got themselves their mascot Mr Destructoid included in the game. This comes along with a release about two new levels, ten other new characters, two new leaderboards, and a whole new game mode. Only 250 MS Points, expect to see this baby September 26. Hudson hooks it up.

Congrats again to Destructoid, everyone go take a second and hit up their site to give ‘em a big congratulations.

Official press release after the break:
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Big news came out of Intel this weekend, as the world’s largest computer processor manufacture revealed its plans to purchase Irish company Havok in a 110 million dollar deal. Not familiar with who or what Havok is? While you might not necessarily know the name, if you play games at all, you definitely have used their products before.

Havok is the developer of the extremely popular Havok Physics middleware that is used in a multitude of games, game engines, and feature films. Basically, the Havok physics engine is used to simulate realistic physics in your favorite games. Remember tossing crates and other objects around with the gravity gun in Half-Life 2? Havok physics. Kicking corpses down hills in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Havok. Blowing up cars and people in Crackdown, sliding across tables in Stranglehold, or falling off mountains and exlpoding into tiny pieces in MotorStorm? Havok, Havok, and Havok. I think you get the point.

Intel stated that the purchase is intended to further Intel’s advances in “visual computing and graphics efforts”. Like many of Intel’s other acquisitions, Intel claims that again, they will take a pure hands-off approach to running Havok, allowing the Irish developers to continue creating the software that has made them so successful, without much interference from Intel.

Havok, Intel, physics engine, acquisition

For the first time since its December 2nd launch in Japan, Nintendo’s juggernaut of a console, the Wii, has decreased in sales last month when compared to the previous fiscal month. During the month ending September 2nd, Nintendo shifted around 39,000 consoles in Japan.

It seems that fiscal August was a somewhat slow month for the games industry as a whole in Japan, as every console with the exception of the Playstation 3, saw a slight reduction in sales from the previous month. PS3 sales, which actually grew slightly last month, were spurred on by the release of Koei’s, Bladestorm: The Hundred Years’ War, which debuted at number 2 on the all platform charts for Japan.

I’m no expert, but perhaps it seems that Japan is starting to save their Yen in anticipation of this holiday season, which, at least in America, is shaping up to be a good one.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

Nintendo, Wii, Sony, Playstation 3, Bladestorm, Sales, Japan

A semi-annoyed gamer created a post on the Official Xbox forums entitled, “Need 16:10 Resolution Support… 1440×900… 1680×1050.” Instantly, the board became populated with other angry PC Monitor users stating that the VGA adapter for the 360 does not support some of the higher and new resolutions that most widescreen monitors support. Playing a smaller resolution than the Maximum supported of your monitor is known to create jaggies that drive gamers insane.

The board now has over 1400 replies and is continuing to grow. Will Microsoft listen? Will they update the support of resolutions? They addressed the color issue in the last dashboard update, but the resolutions have always been the same. Many say that the Xbox games won’t even support these higher resolutions if they are unlocked, because they aren’t designed for that. If we don’t see an upscale soon, I just don’t know what will happen. The Xbox community is a rowdy rowdy crowd.

Personally, I hope that they address this issue, since sometimes I enjoy playing my 360 on my PC monitor as well. Since they haven’t created an internet browser yet for the 360, I hate getting up from my couch just to check my mail. A switcheroo of inputs does the trick just nicely.

Xbox 360, Xbox Forum, Technical

Engadget had some interesting news this morning. Apparently Sony has revealed today that stock of the 60gig PS3 model have been finally been exhausted now that the 80gig has hit shelves.

What exactly does that mean for you? Well, basically, once your local retailers run out of the $499 Playstation 3 systems, that’s all she wrote. The Sony warehouses have been completely drained, and are now only stocking the 80gig models for retailers’ supplies.

If you are one of those people who have been on the fence about getting a PS3 for this holiday season, you might want to strike while the iron is hot, and grab yourself one of the less bank-account-killing models before they go the way of the dodo. According to Sony, there is still an “ample supply” of 60gigs at various retailers, but it’s better safe than sorry, as they say.

While Sony has been up front since the beginning of the 80gig announcement about the eventual phasing out of the 60gig SKU, what is slightly more surprising is how quickly their supplies have dwindled. The 80gig PS3 has been available for less than a month now, and Sony is already saying they are out of the 60gig model. The main question I have at this point is, were there just not that many 60gigs in the warehouses to begin with, or is Sony actually starting to move the consoles at a quicker pace? I kind of have a feeling that its a little of both since the PS3 game line up has started to slowly pick up steam, but I also think that they probably didn’t actually have that much stock of the 60gigs in their warehouses anyways. Only Sony knows for sure.

Playstation 3, PS3, Sony, 60gig, 80gig

The title just about sums it up. Today Microsoft confirmed that Halo 3 has officially gone gold, and released to manufacturing plants to produce the ridiculous amount of copies that will sell upon minutes on September 25th. We already know that Halo 3 is one of the fastest pre-selling game ever, and that we are going to see a mass majority of the world attempting to wear the Spartan Helmets included with the Legendary Edition of the game. It’s just a little bit longer my fellow gamers, it will be worth the wait.

Earlier in the week we noticed some lucky players playing Halo 3 in their gamertag summaries. The game is done, and we can almost taste the four player co-op glory. Thank you Bungie, thank you.

Halo 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft

California State Senator Leland Yee, one of the video game industry’s harshest critics, is pitching a fit today because of the recent announcement that Rockstar’s Manhunt 2 is finally receiving an M rating, setting it up for release in the United States on October 31st.

Upon hearing of the re-rating of Manhunt 2, Yee demanded that the ESRB reveal the specifics of why the game received the re-rating. Surprisingly enough, the ESRB seems to have finally decided to take a stand against government bullies, by refusing to reveal any information to the perturbed Senator.

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Ensemble Studios, creator of Age of Empires III and some of the other best RTSs ever to hit the market, has very high hopes for their newest creation, Halo Wars. Taking the Halo FPS franchise and turning it into a different genre is a hard task, but perhaps the only way for Halo to live on once we “finish the fight.” With a recent interview with GameSpot and Playtm, Ensemble executive producer, Harter Ryan, revealed that we will be playing the RTS Halo Wars demo within a “few days.” Are you pumped? Yeah, me neither, but I am very curious to see how they took the Halo name and turned it into something completely different.

Look for the Halo Wars demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace within the “next few days.”

[Via Gamers-Creed]

Halo, Halo Wars, Ensemble, RTS, Xbox 360