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08/07/07 | | Chris Martin
category: happening
Microsoft has made it official today that the Xbox 360 Premium will see a price drop of $50. Although for many this will seem old hat (as Microsoft is, apparently, no keeper of secrets), but it\'s nice to know anyway. The Core system will have a $20 price drop and the Elite will have a $30 price drop.

Microsoft also announced the pricing of their Halo 3 Special Edition (which features a sweet system: see article for pics) which will go for $399.99, the Premiums original price.



08/07/07 | | Chris Martin
category: happening
In Xbox Live News, Major Nelson posted news of a new Live update which adds support for wireless guitars for Guitar Hero and Rock Band (and whatever other guitar/music games that end up using them). This comes at the heel of impressions of Guitar Hero 3\'s Wireless guitar.


08/01/07 | | Chris Martin
game: Halo 3
category: happening
I intentionally avoided, up until now, posting news about Halo 3 - pics notwithstanding - because, frankly, I don\'t care to learn about the levels or the neat gizmos the good Master Chief will be using this time around, ahead of time. They, to me, are spoilers. I am at the point where I just want to play the game for myself and be surprised. I am breaking my rule now because the latest news about Halo 3 steps beyond that broad line of \"developer hype.\" Today Bungie officially confirmed that Halo 3 will feature 4 player Co-op play over Xbox Live and System Link. It\'s that kind of important news that just needs to be boldface.


08/01/07 | | Chris Martin
category: happening
It didn\'t take long for Turn 10\'s gearheaded staff to release the first of, what I assume will be, many downloadable packs for Forza Motorsport 2. In this pack they bring us four cars. The first three come from Nissan and are free for all: 2007 Sentra SE-R, 2007 Altima, 2007 350Z. The fourth car is the second place winner of this year\'s Le Mans: the Peugeot 908 race car - costing 50 gamerpoints (not bad). The Peugeot is also the first racecar (R4-1 class), as gamers will note, that can be painted.


05/02/07 | | Aaron Stanton
category: happening
When a student at Clements High School in Texas made a video game mod based on the layout of his local high school, he probably didn\'t expect the reaction it eventually received. Two months after the map was created, the Virginia Tech shootings happened, and authorities took the students map as a threat. Not only was he removed from the campus grounds and sent to an alternative school, he\'s been bared from participating in graduation. Yet no one seems to believe that he actually represented a threat to the community - in that no one seems convinced he was on the verge of picking up a gun and shooting someone. The only problem is that he did something that - some people, at least - connect to events like Virginia Tech. In other words, it didn\'t matter that he wasn\'t really a witch, merely that he looked enough like one to be punished.


04/20/07 | | Aaron Stanton
game: Xbox 360
category: happening
There\'s an interesting article written back in 2006 that asks the question, \"Why is Microsoft still in the gaming industry?\" After losing $5.4 billion between 2001 and 2006, what incentive does Microsoft have to stay in the home console market? In fact, Microsoft has no incentive, unless you look at what the entertainment division does for Microsoft as a whole. Microsoft wants to keep control of the living room away from companies like Sony and Apple, and uses the Xbox 360 as a strategic tool for a larger company vision independent of its individual profits or losses. Additionally, there\'s an 800-lb gorilla in the room that keeps getting overlooked: XNA.


01/29/07 | | Aaron Stanton
category: happening
Microsoft\'s courtship of the homebrew game developer has led to the Xbox 360 running its first unofficial NES emulator. While not useful to the general public, a programmer by the name of Lone Coder used Microsoft\'s XNA Game Studio Express to convert an existing emulator - SharpNES - to run on XNA environments. That includes both PCs running Windows Vista and the Xbox 360. The development introduces the Xbox 360 to its first taste of unapproved retro-gaming, and while limitations built into Game Studio Express prevent a usable release on the 360, it\'s nice to see Microsoft take steps to embrace the homebrew community instead of alienating them.


01/18/07 | | Aaron Stanton
category: happening
Occasionally, real-life politics and games meet one another in a way that doesn\'t involve blaming them for the ills of society. On the eve of Martin Luther King Jr.\'s day of honor, a protest in Second Life against a real-world political group nearly brought the servers to a standstill. After hours of battle, the building of the French political party Front National - located in a part of the game where players can\'t hurt each other - had ceased to exist, destroyed by either a technical glitch or a deliberate decision to pull the building. Luckily, Wagner James Au from New World Notes was there to write about it in detail, describing the interesting blend of the real and fantasy that belongs entirely to the art of video games.


01/10/07 | | Aaron Stanton
category: happening
Inaccurate stories are often hard to kill after they\'ve seen some publicity. When Sony sent out a press release on January 8th claiming that the Sixaxis controller had won an Emmy for technical innovation, many people were understandably upset. Why had the Sixaxis won and not the Nintendo Wii? Then, 1UP.com reported that the Wiimote had also won an Emmy. In truth, neither won. Both Sony and Nintendo did win awards, but both won for past contributions, not for the Wii or the PS3. Nintendo won for the D-Pad. Sony won for the Dual Shock.


01/05/07 | | Chris Martin
game: Bioshock
category: happening
According to the official forums of Through The Looking Glass, or more specifically \"2K Elizabeth\" from 2K Games, we\'re looking at a June release for Irrational\'s PC/Xbox 360 action-RPG Bioshock, the soul-brother to the cult and critically acclaimed System Shock and System Shock 2. What does that mean for this summer?


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