Busy Gamer News

Details about Windows Vista are finally emerging, though it's still not clear how it will stack up as a gaming OS - except that it has a Games explorer, DirectX 10 and parental controls to block your kids' access to violent games. Expected to launch the first week of October (yes, this year!), consumer flavors include Home Basic (low end), Home Premium (with built-in Media Center DVR) and Ultimate (business features plus Media Center). Start saving now for that new PC now, because odds are that Vista won't run on what you're running now...

If you've enjoyed the dose of old school arcade games Midway dished for Xbox Live Arcade on the 360, you'll be happy to learn they've signed on to deliver Cyberball, Defender, Paperboy, Root Beer Tapper and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 in the next round. It could be awhile though; we've been told to expect a few new titles each month, but there was only one in February. Fortunately, Microsoft is keeping Xbox Live Marketplace well stocked with new trailers, promotional videos, themes and gamer pictures:

• Burnout Revenge game trailer (free), theme ($1.88) and picture pack ($0.50)
  
• Dead Rising game trailer (free), theme ($1.88) and picture pack ($0.25)
  
• Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter Dev Diaries 1 and 2 (free)
  
• The Ultimate Avengers movie trailer (free)

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion ships March 20, so expect it to hit stores on the 21st. Let's hope the extra four months were used to squash more bugs than were caught in the previous installment. Early reviews suggest that, just like in Morrowind, your early missions include clearing lots of rats. Also, popup and frame rates were problems in these near-release look-sees. Combat is greatly improved, no longer tied entirely to behind-the-scenes dice rolls. And all controller buttons can be remapped to suit your style of play. The Oblivion achievement list is old news, but there are new ones leaked for Burnout Revenge, College Hoops 2K6 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. They're the next best thing to actually playing the games, particularly if you're a gamerscore whore...

It's been awhile since we've seen any good pre-order game incentives for the PSP. For that matter, it's been awhile since we've seen a good game for the PSP. Here's hoping that both meet with the March 21 release of Me & My Katamari. If you pre-order the quirky action roll-'em-up from Gamestop, you'll get a nifty Katamari pouch for your PSP...

Microsoft appears to be quietly patching its 360 launch mistakes through a series of unspecified updates to its dashboard, Dead or Alive 4, Hardwood Hearts, King Kong, Madden 2006 and Smash TV. They've also restocked Xbox Live Marketplace with a multiplayer demo for The Outfit. The bad news is that you'll need a Gold account to go online - though there is one-on-one split screen for those who don't want to pay. Oh, and the 440 MB file might actually take you longer to download than play. Still hungry? There's a free trailer for Battlefield 2: Modern Combat too...

Microsoft has marked down some of its top original Xbox titles to discount bin prices. For $10 apiece, you can score Counter-Strike, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Enter the Matrix, Fuzion Frenzy, Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon: Island Thunder, MechAssault, Project Gotham Racing 2, Rainbow Six 3, Shrek 2, Soul Calibur II, Splinter Cell, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, Tony Hawk�s Underground, Tony Hawk�s Pro Skater 4 and True Crime: Streets of L.A. Just be warned that many of these aren't yet backward compatible with the Xbox 360. If you really are a cheap bastard, developer Marco Incitti has cloned the top-selling Xbox Live Arcade title Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. His version, called GridWars, is totally free at incitti.com...

Xbox Live Arcade finally has a new title, Jewel Quest for the Xbox 360. The $10 match-3 puzzle game boasts HD graphics, though they're shrunk so small you might not notice. (Full disclosure: My new employer's community game site Atlantis, which I'm now responsible for planning, offers a version of Jewel Quest as a premium subscriber-only title. So I guess you could say we now compete with the 360 - although our audiences are fairly different.) Anyway, those who aren't fans of casual games may see Jewel Quest as just a Bejeweled 2 knock-off with a different dynamic and achievements that are easier to get - much, much easier. Has anyone cracked 100 gamerscore points on Bejeweled? Heck, even ST TheKing only has 80...

The top Instant Messaging clients (AOL, MSN, Yahoo) all offer games you can play with your friends, but TrayGames boasts that its IM software is designed with gaming in mind. Currently in beta with only a handful of titles, the TrayGames client enables play: 1) with a friend or small group of friends, 2) with thousands of simultaneous players, and 3) turn-based where you login, make your move and then come back later after your opponent has responded. Right now, you can enjoy Backgammon, BigTwo (cards), Checkers, Outbreak, Spell Combat (a massively single-player game) and TriviaBurst for free. Eventually, TrayGames expects to offer a mix of free and for-pay games. Give it a spin at traygames.com...

Jeremy Soule's soundtrack for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is notably absent from the collector's edition of the game due in late March - and now we know why. It's just been released as a $10 download at DirectSong.com, which also offers an extended and remastered version of Soule's remarkable score from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and his Guild Wars music for $6 each. You can sample it all online for free. If you do decide to buy, the downloads use Microsoft's Windows Media DRM but can easily be burned to CD and then transferred to your favorite music format, such Apple's AAC for the iPod...

In what's both a marketing gimmick and an odd fit, Depeche Mode have meshed their synthesizer pop style with the language of The Sims to create a machinima marketing video for The Sims 2 set to their song Suffer Well. The video is an idiotic ode to human/robot love intercut with performing band avatars, but it's worth a listen just to hear Dave Gahan singing in Sim-lish - that nonsensical yet emotive language of The Sims. You can find the video on thesims2.ea.com, or view it at youtube.com...

Early on, analysts predicted the PlayStation 3 would falter due to its innovative but complex Cell processor, but now we're hearing that the Achilles' heel is actually its Trojan horse high-definition DVD player: the Blu-Ray drive. Reports suggest that the earliest that Sony can deliver the PS3 in Japan is November due to a snafu with Blu-Ray copy protection. A simultaneous U.S. launch is possible, though a slip into 2007 is more likely. A formal announcement is expected today, so check back for details...

• Linux will be preinstalled on the 60GB hard drive which, it seems. will be included
• There is a basic online service built on top of GameSpy that's free (suggesting the possibly of a for-pay service similar to Xbox Live Gold)
• Full PS1/PS2 backward compatability with graphics upconverted to high definition
• HDMI support, for those TVs that can handle it

Oberon's Feeding Frenzy is the latest addition to Xbox Live Arcade on the 360. Many gamers are balking at the $10 pricetag, though the game's 40 levels and two gameplay modes might just justify it... Possibly a cheap attempt to dance on Sony's misfortune, Microsoft revealed a secret project from its developer Rare entitled Viva Pi�ata - which, with its Saturday morning cartoon tie-in, seems to be Redmond's answer to Pok�mon. Details are scarce, but the idea is that you "keep your Pi�ata happy" as part of a "worldwide community of Pi�ata players"... In addition, there are several new items of note in the 360 Marketplace, including:

• more picture packs for Burnout Revenge ($2 each)
  
• pictures and themes for Battlefield 2: Modern Combat and the St. Patrick's Day holiday ($0.63 to $1.88 each)
  
• game trailers for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, The Outfit, Superman Returns and Top Spin 2 (free)
  
• a demo for Ridge Racer 6 (free)

Objection, your honor! Counsel respectfully requests that you don't make that $60 eBay bid for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney! Word on the street is that Capcom is finally delivering more copies of the out-of-print cult DS title in the next week or so. Thanks to high demand, it will retail for $5 more tham the original release price. Expect to pay $35, which is pretty standard for the DS platform. Rumor has it that the greenhorn defense lawyer's wacky, quasi-legal adventures are also being ported to U.S. cell phones and the Nintendo Revolution...

Bungie continues to sell out the Halo series. First, there were the novelizations, some of which contained passable science fiction. Next came the big movie deal - which seems to have passed through Uwe Boll's slippery fingers and into the slightly more capable hands of Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro, backed by exec producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. (Talks are ongoing.) Now comes word of an Animatrix-style graphic novel set in the Halo universe. Due in June, the 128-page book contains one long story and three shorter ones illustrated by noteworthy comic book artists. If it's half as good as the I Love Bees audio series used for Halo 2 viral marketing, it will be well worth picking up...

Oblivion is upon us, at long last - it streets today. If you like your Elder Scrolls action on the PC, there are some great new downloads to make the journey more interesting. First off, if you never experienced The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or want to revisit it before taking on the next adventure in the series, you owe it to yourself to get the Octopus Overlords v2.0 Morrowind mod. This package, available only via BitTorrent due to its 663MB size, collects the best mods for the game with an eye toward balance and improved gameplay. Find full details in the forums at octopusoverlords.com... If you're already itching to create your own mods for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks has the antidote: Download the Elder Scrolls Construction Set at cs.elderscrolls.com and apply liberally to the affected area...

If you're wondering why The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion runs so silky smooth compared to many other 360 titles, it's because the developers cache game data on the optional hard drive when it's available. If your game is playing choppy or slow even with a hard drive-enabled system, it's probably due to disk fragmentation. The good news is that, unlike the dirty disk errors of yore, there's an easy fix: Reboot the game while holding down the A button to force it to clear the cache and build a new one. Don't worry, your save game isn't affected...

Another week, another Xbox Live Arcade game for the Xbox 360. This time it's PopCap's AstroPop, a puzzle action game that'll set you back $10. The achievements appear to be a little easier to earn than PopCap's other entries, Bejeweled 2 and Zuma, but not by much. Microsoft continues to keep its Marketplace well stocked with free and inexpensive downloadable doodads, including:

• Demos for Burnout Revenge and Blazing Angels (free)
  
• The Outfit theme ($1.88) and picture pack ($2)
  
• More Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter videos (free) and a theme ($1.88)
  
• Music video for Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" (free)

A lot of news this week in and around the Game Developers Conference in San Jose:

• Dell is buying Alienware, sewing up both low-end and high-end gaming PCs
  
• The Nintendo Revolution will feature not just classic Nintendo games, but Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 titles, too
  
• Sony is abandoning the boomerang-shaped controller design for the PlayStation 3; expect a replacement to be unveiled at E3 in May
  
• PS3 game titles won't be region locked, though Blu-Ray movie titles will be
  
• Wonder what titles other game developers loved? Top GDC awards went to Shadow of the Colossus, Nintendogs, Psychonauts and Guitar Hero.

Sony is offering a one-year free trial of PlanetSide, its massively multiplayer online sci-fi player vs. player battle game. Yes, that's right - the trial ends on March 24, 2007. Here's the catch: You play in the PlanetSide Reserves where you can only advance to Battle Rank 6 and don't have access to mechs (aka Battle Frame Robots). You'll also get nagged to buy a $12.99 monthly subscription every time you quit. However, once you sign up with a credit card, you'll get your first 30 days of full gameplay free - just in case that free year wasn't enough to convince you. How many people do you think will sign up after hitting Rank 6 and then cancel on the 29th day? Get your free account at planetside.station.sony.com...

Microsoft revealed some interesting stats for its Xbox Live Arcade service. To date, some 3 million games have been downloaded, with an average demo to sale conversion of 20 percent - quite high for casual games. The top sellers are:

1. Geometry Wars
   
2. Marble Blast Ultra
   
3. Gauntlet
   
4. Smash TV
   
5. Zuma

The v1.10 update to World of Warcraft adds weather effects to 11 areas, and Blizzard promises this is just the beginning. There are also new rare items to collect, and maxed-out Level 60 players will get gold instead of experience when completing quests. This is a massive update, weighing in at 368MB - so start the auto-update before you go to bed or head to work... Quake 4 fans will want the v1.1 update to improve multiplayer and get several new maps... Battlefield 2 v1.22 boosts server stability, closes exploits and rebalances some weapons and the Tiger attack chopper...

Microsoft's been busy! First, there's the free Xbox Live weekend that runs 12 a.m. Friday PST until 12 a.m. Sunday PDT. (Don't forget to Spring Forward on Sunday!) Gamers with free Xbox Live Silver accounts can play as Gold for up to 72 hours, courtesy of Verizon. There's also a new Xbox.com interface for managing your Friends list. Then there's the newest update, which adds 360 backward compatibility for Black, Star Wars Battlefront II and World Soccer Winning Eleven 9 and improves support for Darkwatch, Fable (both releases), Forza Motorsport, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Half-Life 2, kill.switch, Ninja Gaiden (both releases), Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, SSX 3 and World Series Baseball 2K3. Plus, there are several new Marketplace downloads:

• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat demo (free), themes ($1.88 each) and various picture packs ($0.63, $0.75 and $1.50)
  
• Dynasty Warriors 5 picture packs ($2.50 each)
  
• Movie trailers for Cars, Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest and Stay Alive (free)

WARNING: The Quake 4 v1.1 patch was recalled due to a dangerous bug affecting widescreen mode that could damage your monitor. If you installed it, id Software warns that you should NOT enable or disable widescreen - and watch for a replacement patch...

The Xbox Live Free Gold Weekend actually starts tonight at 7 p.m. Pacific (10 p.m.Eastern). Your account will still appear as Silver but you'll have access to all Gold features. Also, it's U.S. only...

Not to gloat, but it seems that Sony's UMD movie format is quietly imploding. Despite tactics such as DVD/UMD bundles and cherrypicking titles targeted at the PlayStation Portable's base (comedies, thrillers, sci-fi, anime), the discs just aren't selling enough to justify their expense. To date, the announced title list is at 463, but Paramount and Universal appear to be abandoning UMD while Warner Bros. and even Sony itself have cut back on new releases. Rumor has it that Sony is devising a solution to play UMD movies in the living room, but even this is likely to fail due to the format's reduced quality: The discs can't compete with similarly priced DVDs, which videophiles have already stopped buying in anticipation of the forthcoming HD formats. A year ago tomorrow, we reported on a better PSP movie solution that, alas, has never materialized...