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Black Ops PS3 Bundle Coming in Three Weeks
A pair of retail sources informs Kotaku that a Call of Duty: Black Ops PlayStation 3 bundle will be available in North America on May 24. The unit—which features a 160 GB hard drive—lists for $299.99 USD. Kotaku has reached out to representatives of Activision and Sony Computer Entertainment. Any comment will be updated here.
By Owen Good -
Which One Is Worse?
At this point, after 17 days with no end in sight, it’s fair to ask the question. the PlayStation Network Outage, or the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death: Which is worse? Let’s leave aside the data breach, though it is one of the largest in history, and is the feature of this disaster that…
By Owen Good -
Gears of War 3‘s Big Head Mode in Action
Gears of War 3 will offer a novelty big-head mode, and those in the game’s multiplayer beta saw it in action yesterday. In addition to quadrupling the dome size, COG and Locust will speak in higher pitched voices. This should make headshots a lot sillier. Click to view Xbox 360 Games – E3 2011 –…
By Owen Good -
Modern Warfare 3 to Get a June Reveal
To no one’s surprise, there will be a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. (C’mon, when Electronic Arts’ CEO is talking tough about Battlefield 3 versus Call of Duty, he doesn’t mean Black Ops.) Official PlayStation Magazine‘s latest edition includes a teaser for the game’s big reveal in next month’s edition. See it here.
By Owen Good -
The Zero-Dollar Perfect Game
2K Sports will give you a million bucks if you toss a perfect game, under a set of conditions that read like the terms of a hostage negotiation. So far, no one’s claimed that prize. But Box Scores can verify its first perfect game submission, worth exactly $0 – because it was thrown on MLB…
By Owen Good -
Sony Scrubs Personal Data Published by Hackers
Reuters’ Japan bureau reports that hackers uploaded data they’d stolen from Sony servers during the PlayStation breach, but that Sony quickly had the unnamed website removed. The information concerned some 2,500 users and was at least 10 years old. The information was collected during a 2001 sweepstakes campaign and concerned names and partial addresses; no…
By Owen Good -
Do You Have Happy Scrappy Hero Pup?
One second, I’m on the phone with the distribution house now. I need one of each of the following – You know, on second thought, let’s just skip the quote this week. (You can watch the scene here. Language NSFW.) Hardware • Any Xbox 360 console sold and shipped by Amazon (4GB, 250GB, or either…
By Owen Good -
Gee, Kevin Butler’s Been Awful Quiet Lately
Kevin Butler, the voluble, if fake, PlayStation executive, has nearly 84,000 Twitter followers. His approval rating, if it was measured, would assuredly be sky-high among hardcore gamers. And he has been dead silent since the beginning of the PlayStation Network Outage, now in its third week with no signs of ending. Check his feed: April…
By Owen Good -
China Unveils the iSec, Its First Game Console
China is closed off to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo’s consoles, meaning the first console available for sale in that country – aside from the knockoffs, of course – will be home grown. Today the iSec, renamed from the “eBox” announced last year, was unveiled. Made by a Beijing company that’s funded by Lenovo – China’s…
By Owen Good -
The Family That Plays (Online) Together, Stays Together
Research suggests that family communication improves if the group are playing online video games together, but if a single member is gaming, it suffers greatly as the gaming becomes a substitute for healthy communication. That sounds like a call any counselor could make, but it’s an important finding in the changing nature of family relationships…
By Owen Good -
PAX 2011 Sold Out of Three-Day Passes
Getting into Penny Arcade Expo’s flagship show in Seattle, on Labor Day weekend, is notoriously difficult if you trek up there without a pass. The three-day variety for PAX 2011 is now officially sold out, according to the expo’s official Twitter feed. They’ve been processing some refunds, freeing up stock incrementally, so there’s an off…
By Owen Good -
Can You Spot This Guy’s Tell Playing Online Poker with Kinect?
If you can’t spot the sucker in the first 30 seconds of this video, then you are the sucker. In seriousness, Poker Listings’ “Positively Nerd Street” has cooked up online poker controls for Rock Band peripherals, so it was a matter of time before they did something like this. This is not proof of concept.…
By Owen Good -
How Large is L.A. Noire‘s Map?
One of Mafia II‘s drawbacks was the extremely long driving times often required by a map that spread mission points very far apart. L.A. Noire will be twice the size – eight square miles to Empire Bay’s four – and will require 30 minutes to traverse by car. So let’s hope they place the mission…
By Owen Good -
Concussions will be Rare in Madden NFL 12, and No One Gets Suspended
Madden NFL 12 will present concussions realistically – as realistically as removing a player from the game, forbidding his return, and delivering commentary that highlights the seriousness of the injury. The game will not include suspensions for players who dole them out; nor is there any way to intentionally cause one. Madden executive producer Phil…
By Owen Good -
Kinectimals Creator Sets His Sights on Building the $25 PC
David Braben, whose Frontier Developments studio has delivered Elite, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, LostWinds and, yes, Kinectimals, has now created Raspberry Pi. It’s not a game, it’s a working, Linux-based PC on something not much larger than a standard USB memory stick. Raspberry Pi, a nonprofit effort akin to the One Laptop Per Child effort, is…
By Owen Good -
Square Enix CEO’s 360 Just Shot Itself in the Foot
Remember 2008? Good Lord, was it nearly three years ago, at E3, that Square Enix announced Final Fantasy XIII would have an Xbox 360 release, utterly horrifying fanboys of game, publisher and PS3 alike? Well, if one reading of the karmic law is “we all got it coming, kid,” then Yoichi Wada, the CEO of…
By Owen Good -
Tetris Tampons
Feminine hygiene display in an Italian drugstore. The box reads: “It takes more to say than to do,” which idiomatically means, “It’s more trouble to do it than to talk about it.” Maybe the L-piece is pitching condoms and the squiggle’s flacking laxatives. Tampax Houdt Gamesters Droog
By Owen Good -
iTunes Flash Game Ripoffs Get More Brazen with Canabalt Clone
Last week, the outright theft of a Flash game, republished for sale on the iTunes App Store with Apple’s approval, jarred the Flash development community. Though the app later was removed, anecdotal reports of similar ripoffs came trickling back. It was easy to sympathize with both the developers and with Apple. For developers, months of…
By Owen Good -
L.A. Noire Teams up with the L.A. Times
As L.A. Noire‘s release draws near, Rockstar has teamed with the Los Angeles Times for an informative little promotion that highlights the real-world inspirations of the cases the game will throw at you come May 17. L.A. Noire’s case file is based on actual crimes reported in the L.A. area in 1947, ranging from a…
By Owen Good -
Madden‘s Voice Out of His Real-Life Job at CBS
Gus Johnson, who debuted as the play-by-play announcer on the Madden NFL series last year, is out as an NFL commentator at CBS, meaning the enthusiastic boothman will be working NFL games only virtually in the upcoming season. Asked about Johnson’s future with the Madden NFL series, an EA Sports spokesman said, “Gus Johnson is…
By Owen Good
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