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Ouch. The L.A. Times spoke with Don Mattrick, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Xbox division, and he was more than happy to explain that a new Halo game was originally going to be announced at Microsoft’s E3 press conference this past Monday, and it was cut. for a very, very terrible good reason.

Read more!Microsoft: "Halo is less important than You’re In the Movies."

With news of a discontinued and suddenly cheaper console package, it’ll be interesting to see what else Microsoft has up its green sleeve to woo us in their press conference. Keep reading as we bring you live updates and commentary!

Here’s the wrap up. Check after the jump for the timeline commentary.

• New Xbox Live Interface: Avatars, Mii-like things, to replace gamerpics.
• More media providers joining the Xbox Live Marketplace: Universal, NBC, Netflix
• Fallout 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2, and Resident Evil 5 demos played, not announced for release on Xbox Live Marketplace
• Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 bands announced, include Metallica and AC/DC.
• Last Remnant trailer shown, still no gameplay
• Final Fantasy XIII announced for Xbox 360

Microsoft looks like they’re getting ready to attack Nintendo’s death grip on the family gaming market. With new more accessible things like Avatars and a heavier focus on group gaming, the 360 seems poised to jump onto the people who are disenchanted with the Wii’s lack of HD or other media. There were no announcements about a motion controller yet aside from a Lips microphone, but E3 is far from over. Stay tuned for continuing coverage of the Big 3 press conferences!

Read more!E3 Coverage: Microsoft Press Conference

In lieu to British magazine Games(TM), and due to being stumped on a coming article, I give you a little dose of real-life equations which, unlike real equations on your last calculus paper, could be fun and related to what has been going on in the past years. Because if you can’t make fun of the videogame industry, who can you make fun of (apart from politicians and celebrities)?

More to come, so stay tuned.

Technorati : angering the internet community, battlecruiser, derek smart, fable, games TM, halo, humor, kingdom hearts, microsoft, peter molyneux, xbox, xenogears

Hey, at least you start outside in a forest this time. Guess there can only be one Library, huh?

After all the bullcrap and the launch party at New York, videos of people throwing duffel bags through a window, and the oodles of “memorial” ads littering game sites, I get to play Bungie’s final game of the trilogy which is synonymous to that thing you see on Jesus and angels. So how fares Halo 3, you wonder?
Read more!Halo 3: Same Fucking Fight?

Samus has been a video gaming icon for the past 21 years, but ain’t no wax museum put up a life size model of her! Yet Halo has been out 20 minutes and its lead character gets immortalized in wax at Madame Tussauds. You’d think at least Lara Croft, Solid Snake, Link, Mario or f**king Pikachu would get a wax sculpture before Master Chief. But nope. I may sound bitter and like a complete hater (I’m not Halo’s biggest fan and think the game is incredibly overrated) - but I just feel there are greater iconic gaming figures than Master Chief. It wouldn’t surprise me if Microsoft paid the Tussauds group to create the sculpture in time for the release of Halo 3. It sounds like the kinda thing they’d do. As if the Halo 3 joypads, Halo 3 special edition Xbox 360, Halo 3 Doritos, Halo 3 mountain dew, Halo 3 car, Halo 3 headset, the three versions of Halo 3 that will release and the Halo books weren’t enough.

I know I’ve probably upset some Halo stans, so I’ll just nip off to my secret underground bunker before they come out in droves and try to kill me. *runs away*

[Earth times]

Taste the awesomeness, bitches!

At Microsoft’s big pre-Tokyo Game Show press release, some upcoming titles were announced for Xbox Live Arcade. Among them are fan favorites Rez and Ikaruga. Yes, you heard me right. Not a What-If, not a dream, not an Alterna-Universe story. Two sought-out games, both from a collector’s and hardcore gamer’s point of view, are going to come out by the first quarter of 2008. According to the press release on Rez in Japan,

“We are excited to announce that Rez will be given a new life, this time in digital form,” said Mizuguchi. “The game will be presented in hi-definition and will be accessible to those who did not have a chance to experience Rez the first time around.

Rez will be presented in HD and in 5.1 Stereo, while Ikaruga’s upgrade is yet to be determined, apart from spiffed-up graphics. At least now we don’t have to pay up to our noses for these two games now. Plus, it gives me more time to think of many other possible releases. Radiant Silvergun, anyone? It’ll be $492 dollars less on Live Arcade.

[News by Kotaku]

Technorati : Q!, TGS, XBLA, japan, microsoft, shooters, took you guys a while, treasure

This post is old; I originally posted it on my.qj.net back in March, and then on my own blog, Warriors of Gaming. As such, it is slightly out of date. However, it still holds true and it reflects my core beliefs about the gaming community. It’s pretty long, so it’s after the split.

Read more!Why Console Wars Don’t Matter

The day finally arrives, the day of dreams.

But for some, it didn’t come till later in the day. Due to unknown circumstances the players who bought “Crackdown” for the beta code to play, there was a problem with the downloads so the promised 5 am release time was pushed back, till. say, PM CST. With me and my roommates all waiting patiently on the Bungie Forums, many MANY people were on complaining, which didn’t help of course, but it made us all feel better.

But the glorious time has arrived, and this writer has been playing it for the last 2 hours. The beta is beautiful with new weapons, the Spiker, the Spartan Lazer, (Imma chargin mah lazor!) Rocket pods, removable turrets, and the glorious return of the Assault Rifle. 3 new maps, including a remake of a timeless classic, Blood Gulch, and a special ranking system, this was an occasion to wear my special Red Vs Blue shirt, signed by Caboose, whom i saw at ACEN.(Which btw i still need to make a post about).

Although this game is planned to be released only on the Xbox360 (for now I hope. . .) here are some screenshots from the game Eternal Sonata. What’s so special about the game that made you post pictures of it here, Velcor? Well some reasons are:

1- It’s made by Tri-Crescendo, the team that brought us the Baten Kaitos saga. . .which is awesome. Period.

2- It has REAL Classical music in it.

3- Has an awesome plot.

4- . . . Beat? Polka? Are those names?! Who the hell considers to name his daughter Polka? I can’t understand Romantics.

Here’s the plot. You’re the famous Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin who, hours before his death (tuberculosis), he travels into a dream world where, as a matter of fact, people with terminal diseases have powers. As an interesting feature, original compositions from Chopin will be played by pianist Stanislav Bunin, so expect to weep, feel fuzzy inside, and to get into that windy mountain called life (or in my case, expect to scratch your head furiously as certain of Chopin’s melodies play, wanting it to stop).

If you’re a Baten Kaitos / RPG freak (and have some extra bucks to spare) get a 360 and this game, I doubt you’ll regret it.

[Kotaku]

Behold, A sign of the ends of time! Well, not quite, but this will make every frat boy and FPS lover in your immediate surroundings go crazy. And I do mean literally crazy, keep a safe distance. Its the first promotional image for Halo 3, Bungie released it today and of course the interwebs go bazoonkas about it. Yes, I said bazoonkas, but given this, I think that’s the least of your problems kid, move along.

[Bungie]

With Windows Vista just released it is our duty, nay, our pleasure to bring you Vista-tan as this week’s OS-tan. Since the Longhorn days the one thing surrounding Longhorn-tan/Vista-tan/Vistan has been diversity and struggle. There are easily over a dozen different designs for Vista-tan, with only two of them being actively popular right now at launch.

The one on the left is the most recent one, with a transparent Aero skirt and Windows media undertones everywhere. The latest theories calls her Media Center Edition Vista-tan. There’s an image in the bottom gallery with call-outs explaining her features.

On the right we have the most pervasive design so far. A tanned girl with long curly silver hair and a sailor fuku uniform. Some claim this Vista-tan design depicts a Latin american girl instead of your typical American/Japanese ambiguity, this would be a first among the Windows OS girls. Another interesting fact is that Vista-tan has always carried a reputation of being a futanari girl, obviously as a result of the Longhorn name.

Not much else is known about Vista-tan’s personality at the moment, so its pretty much just pictures today, lots of them. Enjoy and see you next week!

It wouldn’t be shocking to find out that Matt Casamassina is causing ripples on the internet with fake information, through it wouldn’t be surprising either if he revealed some dark insider secret. Either wave when Matt claims something as outrageous as this, we listen and we listen hard.

Matt is claiming to having played Halo on the Nintendo DS. No, not some sort of DS/Xbox hack, the real deal! According to the latest post on his IGN blog Microsoft was once convinced by an unnamed publisher to release a Halo game for the DS. Sadly this game never saw the light of day as Matt claims “there were many egos involved” in the project. Then he goes on to claim that he recently played a leaked build of the game which allegedly plays like “Metroid Prime Hunters but with a Halo facelift”.

If such a game had ever been released gaming as we know it wouldn’t exist, we call BS on this and suggest ingesting near lethal amounts of salt before reading his post.

[Matt's Blog]

Next-Gen has come up with a pretty varied Top-10 list of ” Gaffes and Blunders of 2006 ” which, inside the electronic department, features our favorite companies, characters and events that happened and that are worthy to be displayed in the “Hall of Shame”.

Some of these are: The Wii-strap trouble, the Halo movie, and the infinite delay of merchandise.

You can check the list HERE.

[Kotaku]

Stop the presses, its official, the console war has begun and the PS3 is in last place. Website Nextgen Wars provides up to date data of console sales numbers and so far the Wii is almost 100,000 units above the PS3. Here’s an embedded counter:

Its on!

[Nextgen Wars]

It seems Best Buy is now your friend and a very charitable friend actually. If you happen to be one of the unlucky souls camping outside of one of their stores for a PS3 and dont manage to get one on launch date; the the nice folks at Best Buy will offer you a great deal on… wait for it… an Xbox 360. Thats right, on the night that ‘Next-Gen officially begins’ you will have the chance to get an Xbox 360 Premium System and games, the third title being at no cost.

How charitable of them huh? Well it smells like genius marketing to me. I’m willing to bet my shirt that Microsoft is somehow behind this. And its brilliant! Now if MS could come up with stuff like this in Japan…

[DigitalBattle]