G-News

The PC game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ has been in production for 10 years so one way or another, it must’ve cost the developers a small fortune. However, as 3D Realms have decided to release their latest teaser on BitTorrent, distribution of their advertising content by this method will be reduced to zero. Groovy. (December 30, 2007)

Engadget writes: We’re not quite ready to believe these things function as advertised just yet, but it seems that multi-region Blu-ray players are beginning to pop up on a few overseas websites. We’re seeing a region hacked Samsung BD-P1400 and Sony BDP-S300 / BDP-S500, each of which are reportedly modified to play nice with BD regions A / B as well as DVD regions 1 / 2. Aside from that, each player looks to be unchanged, but you better believe the convenience won’t run you cheap. Over at Stegen Electronics, a multi-region BDP-S300 will demand €599 ($878), while the modded BDP-S500 rings up at €899 ($1,318), and until someone bites the bullet and confirms that these things actually do what they claim to, we’d recommend holding off.

Via Ripten: Complaints have started to hit the internet en mass regarding the Psyclone Wii-Mote charger. Claims range from the unit simply not working, to reports of the remote actually melting onto the charger. Amazon.com’s review page runs rampant with warnings regarding the battery charger; out of 27 reviews, 25 of them ended up being negative. Psyclone chargers can be found at most major retailers ranging from Target to Circuit City.

“With all the focus on SimCity and SimCity2 on the DS, it seems one of my favorite city building games is getting overlooked. Populous, the finger pointing god game is finally making it’s way onto Nintendo’s popular handheld!”

Music composer Motoi Sakuraba has somewhat confirmed that the recently announced Tales of Vesperia game will be released on Xbox 360. This can be concluded from his blog, where he has listed all his projects in which he participated or still is participating in. In this list we find all the Tales of games, with at the bottom Tales of Vesperia for Xbox 360, listed only for Xbox 360.

No official word has been given out by publisher Bandai Namco, but it is highly likely Tales of Vesperia will come to the Xbox 360, as an exclusive.

Kotaku writes: “Yesterday we published our goaties for each platform and the overall game of the year. Today’s your chance to vote for the best game in each platform. Hit the jump to vote for the Xbox 360’s Game of the Year. We’ll be publishing polls for the rest of the categories throughout the day. On Monday we’ll tabulate the totals and use that to put up a poll for the Reader’s Choice Overall Game of the Year”.

December 29th, 2007 — VG Chartz has the latest weekly sales estimates for all currently available Xbox Live Arcade titles. The titles are ranked by units sold for the week. Other figures are: each title’s cost (price), revenue (sales), release date, total launch-to-date units sold, and total launch-to-date revenue. These charts are based and compiled off of Mygamercard.net achievement traffic.

Surfer Girl offers a glimpse into what are coming in 2008: Factor 5’s next title, two upcoming Tron titles on XBLA, Grasshopper’s DS remakes, EA’s Wii and DS exclusives, Xbox Originals lineup, additional Grand Theft Auto titles, Cryptic’s Marvel Universe Online, Wolfenstein, and a new Eidos title.

While browsing the inCrysis forums, I discovered this little gem of a short composed by one of its forum goers. The author (going by the username of 2 Bad) was originally going to scrap the idea completely after becoming thoroughly frustrated with the Sandbox 2 editor. I think perseverance has paid off, as the results speak for themselves.

Even though the author claims this is not his first attempt at a machinima, it does seem as if this is the first attempt by anyone at a Crysis machinima. In the recent past, we’ve seen Crymod’ers exploiting CryEngine2’s physics to imitate tornado effects. Some Crymod’ers are on the road to recreating the perfect nuke. With the Crymod community kicking into full gear, and the Sandbox 2 Editor’s potential yet to be exploited, we will certainly be looking forward to some interesting user made videos/films in the days to come.

Editor’s note: The above browser embedded clip has been auto-transcoded and simply does not do the film justice visually or audibly. I highly recommend downloading the full 720p HD version (from the link above or below). For now, the author has provided the HD version encoded in DivX6. Unless you have a 7+ year old PC, you should be able to play it fine.

If you enjoyed this film short as much as I did, please drop a comment either here or the originating thread over at inCrysis (you’ll need to register to comment there). The artists that come up with these videos do so on account of their own free time. Any amount of encouragement or useful feedback ensures we’ll see more of this creativity along the way.

The only catch is that Costco are selling them as a bundle. At a price tag of $344.99 you get the basic Wii, extra nunchuck, extra wiimote, and a copy of Big Brain Academy.

In light of recent eBay gouging of the little white bugger and downright exploitation of the consumer due to Nintendo’s inability to meet the holiday demand, this seems like a good deal. Perhaps it’s not the most ideal price range to be in, considering the competition is only a few bills away. Still, are least you have the comfort of knowing that you aren’t getting bent over when making this particular purchase.

Who knows how long the supply will last? As with many Wii spottings, once word gets out, they quickly become myth again. I just hope these poor little Wiis don’t end on eBay with a $400+ ‘Buy It Now’ slapped on their mugs.

Also, whatever happened to Nintendo’s threat of don’t bundle the Wii or else? Idle threats, indeed.