General gaming news

[Riposte]

A 4e DnD MMO based on Neverwinter Nights(Forgotten Realms?). By Cryptic Studios. Very weird, but not surprising I guess.

[Hyan]

A 4e DnD MMO based on Neverwinter Nights(Forgotten Realms?). By Cryptic Studios. Very weird, but not surprising I guess.

Why must they ruin every franchise they come across? Fuck this.

Although I'd still prefer it to be a single player RPG no matter who's doing it.

[Charismatic]

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/mu...-dragon/707074

rofl, that looks awful in so many ways


Also:

WATER PISTOL!!
FIRE SHOT!!

[Merovingian]

didn't want to necrobump a 1yr old thread... So this week PSN update the makers of heavy rain released a video of some parts they cut from final release its an interesting video because it addressed a couple of loop holes they left biggest one being why the hell ethan got the blackouts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxpdGB6Gbac

p,s

forgot how to embed(sp?) the youtube video

[Kaisha]

I hope they do more of those eventually, or at least have the writer give his insight on some of the other niggles in the story, such as.....

Spoiler: show

Such as why Shaun is able to fall in love with Madison with zero qualms about his pre-existing relationship nor mention of her outside of the first couple chapters and one of the endings, or how Madison had Jayden's phone number when they never met in the game nor appear to have any possible history outside of possibly report research.

Just a shame they didn't make use of the Move update to retool some scenes to keep the game more consistent, such as

Spoiler: show

removing that origami figure in Shaun's hand after the blackout scene they nixed as shown in the video

[6souls]

Gamasutra's Chris Morris offers his opinion on the Kinect

Spoiler: show

Two months ago, when Sony’s PlayStation Move hit shelves, I wondered whether Sony had lost its mind. The device, I mentioned, wasn’t intuitive and had some alarming aesthetic issues – a combination that could hurt its chances with the mainstream audience.

Now Kinect has arrived – and while it has just as many problems as Move, it seems poised to thoroughly trounce its competitor this holiday season.

Let’s be clear: Kinect might not have that unfortunate “is it a game controller or sex toy” design, but it’s far from perfect. The lag time is frustrating, to both core and casual players. With only one or two exceptions, the launch lineup is mediocre – and certainly not tailored to the typical hardcore/early adopter audience. It requires a significant amount of room to play. And the price is $50 higher than publisher partners were asking for.

But, you know what? None of that is going to matter.

Kinect is … good enough for now. For the mass market (which is considerably less demanding than the core gamer), the novelty of the device and the ability to give verbal orders to your electronics – in true Star Trek fashion – will be enough.

More importantly, while Microsoft might not know how to advertise its Windows software all that well, it has been nearly flawless in its marketing of the Xbox 360 and its first-party products. And with Kinect, it’s pushing things into overdrive.

A massive takeover of New York’s Times Square for the midnight launch. A partnership with Burger King that will give away a Kinect to patrons every 15 minutes for the next three weeks. An on-air endorsement (and giveaway) from Oprah Winfrey. Oprah, people!

It’s no wonder that Microsoft boosted its 2010 sales estimates from 3 million to 5 million. Or did it?

Before E3, some partners working on Kinect titles quietly mentioned that Microsoft had told them its target was 5 million. So when the 3 million figure was initially announced, it seemed low. Could Microsoft intentionally have low-balled the initial number, giving it the opportunity to grab another news cycle expressing solid faith in the device right before it went on sale? I wouldn’t put it beyond the company –- and if, in fact, they did, it’s another testament to Microsoft’s marketing savvy.

Holiday sellouts are a virtual certainty, which will earn even more free press and will likely drive demand into the first part of 2011, at least. But despite all of this, don’t expect Kinect to close the gap between Microsoft and Nintendo. The Wii has sold over 71 million units worldwide – and while it has shown signs of saturation this year, it’s a system that traditionally does quite well during the holidays (and will probably do so again this year).

What this is likely to do, though, is give Microsoft guidance on what its next step will be. If Kinect meets or exceed targets –- and developers (both internal and external) figure out what sort of software works best on it -– it could lead to a larger footprint for the device, perhaps even into consumer technology beyond the Xbox 360.

“It’s key for their entertainment and device division,” says Lazard Capital Markets analyst Colin Sebastian. “Over time, they’ll integrate other services to the platform.”

In the meantime, while Microsoft has seemingly secured itself a fruitful holiday season with Kinect’s marketing and release, it might have screwed some of its partners in the process.

Since the economy is still on shaky ground, consumers are expected to spend less on gifts this year. Gaming equipment will remain popular, but as Kinect becomes the “must have” gift, shoppers might forego buying other titles (beyond obvious blockbusters like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo: Reach) to get a Kinect – even if that means hitting eBay (where, yes, bids are already topping the retail price even though there are no real shortages yet).

“The purchaser of a … Kinect peripheral will have … $150 less to spend on software,” says Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities.

What’s really going to be interesting to watch with Kinect is the tie ratio (software sold divided by installed base). The system comes with a game included. And Dance Central has already assumed the “if you buy just one Kinect game, buy this one” role. Beyond that, will consumers feel the need to expand their catalog?

Tie ratios are down across the board in the gaming industry – with Nintendo particularly taking it on the chin in the past year (dropping from 4.41 to 2.27). Will Kinect … well, connect … enough with the mass market to re-ignite software sales for that demographic? Or will it be a holiday flash in the pan that has people wondering a year from today why they fought so hard to get one in the first place?

I suspect Microsoft’s marketing team is already working on a plan, just in case.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3..._Microsoft.php

Actor Mark Wahlberg was on hand to help promote Kinect and to announce the company's big donation of Kinect units to America's Boys & Girls Clubs, before dancers claimed the city streets with singers Ne-Yo and Lady Sovereign in a "surprise tribute" to the device.

With the recent Kinect release for XBox 360, a bounty has been offered by Adafruit Industries for an open-source Kinect driver.

The challenge found on Adafruit's Web site states the following, to quote:

What do we (all) want?

Open source drivers for this cool USB device, the drivers and/or application can run on any operating system – but completely documented and under an open source license. To demonstrate the driver you must also write an application with one "window" showing video (640 x 480) and one window showing depth. Upload all of this to GitHub.

How get the bounty ($2,000 USD)

Anyone around the world can work on this, including Microsoft Upload your code, examples and documentation to GitHub. First person / group to get RGB out with distance values being used wins, you're smart – you know what would be useful for the community out there.

All the code needs to be open source and/or public domain. Email us a link to the repository, we and some "other" Kinect for Xbox 360 hackers will check it out – if it's good to go, you'll get the $2,000 bounty!

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11...ource-drivers/
http://www.ps3news.com/XBox-360/boun...it-industries/

[Riposte]

The gametrailers sucks/says stupid thing video got deleted off youtube... is there a replacement?

[Riposte]

nvidia showing off some cool tech

[Shojin]

^ Newegg just ninja released the GTX 580 lol, just got a newsletter from them. On sale for $550 with 10% off coupon right now.

[Shojin]

KB brings Canada some love

[Kaisha]

They were slow on that one. We've had the Video section of the store for months now.

[6souls]

Microsoft's Kinect controller has been hacked only a few days after it officially went on sale.

Code to control the motion-capture device has been produced that allows it to be used with a PC rather than the Xbox game console.

Those behind the hack are keen to use the device in schools, art projects and to aid human-robot interaction.

Microsoft has said it was not happy with the unofficial modifications made to the gadget's control system.

The attempt to hack the control system for the Kinect gadget was kick-started by electronics kit maker Adafruit. On 4 November it announced it would pay $1,000 (£624) to the first person to produce control software, known as drivers, for the Kinect.

It upped the bounty to $3,000 (£1,871) following comment from Microsoft saying it did not condone the reverse-engineering of its motion controller.

The Adafruit bounty was won by hacker Hector Martin who was the first to produce drivers and make them available for others to download and improve.

Using the drivers Mr Martin got the Kinect working with a Linux laptop. The drivers he produced are for the Kinect's motion capture system. Work is still underway on the gadget's voice capture and control system.

In a statement to the BBC, Microsoft was keen to point out that the Xbox 360 control system for the Kinect had not been hacked.

"What has happened is someone has created drivers that allow other devices to interface with the Kinect for Xbox 360," it said. "The creation of these drivers, and the use of Kinect for Xbox 360 with other devices, is unsupported.

It added: "We strongly encourage customers to use Kinect for Xbox 360 with their Xbox 360 to get the best experience possible."

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...k,adafruit.jpg

Cash contest

The Adafruit contest has also given rise to a Google group dedicated to open source use of Kinect that now has about 400 members.

Many people are also starting to post videos of themselves using Kinect with Apple machines and as a multi-touch interface. Work is underway to produce drivers that work with Windows PCs.

In a blog entry, Adafruit said it expected to see the Kinect starting to be used in all kinds of ways rather than just for gaming. It said it could become a way to interact with robots or art installations.

The Kinect is attractive to amateur roboticists because its retail price of about £129 is much lower than the cost of movement sensors of similar sophistication.

Mr Martin said he would share the cash prize with other hackers that helped him get the Linux drivers working. He said work was continuing to improve the control system to make it comparable as the one used by the Xbox.

A second open source Kinect contest has now also started, sponsored by Google engineer Matt Cutts. He will give $1,000 to whoever produces what he considers the coolest open source Kinect project. A separate $1,000 prize will be given to the team creating tools that make it easy to use Kinect on Linux.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11742236
http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11...es-to-the-eff/
http://groups.google.com/group/openkinect/?pli=1


http://git.marcansoft.com/?p=libfreenect.git

I want to kickstart neat projects, so I’m starting my own contest with $2000 in prizes. There are two $1000 prizes. The first $1000 prize goes to the person or team that writes the coolest open-source app, demo, or program using the Kinect. The second prize goes to the person or team that does the most to make it easy to write programs that use the Kinect on Linux.

Enter the contests by leaving a comment on this blog post with a link to your project, along with a very-short description of what your project does or your contribution to Kinect hacking. The contest runs until the end of the year: that’s Dec. 31st, 2010 at midnight Pacific time. I may ask for outside input on who should be the winner, but I’ll make the final call on who wins.

To get your ideas flowing, I’ll offer a few suggestions. Let’s start with the second contest: making the Kinect more accessible. In my ideal world, would-be hackers would type a single command-line, e.g. “sudo apt-get install openkinect” and after that command finishes, several tools for the Kinect would be installed. Maybe a “Kinect snapshot” program that dumps a picture, a depth map, and the accelerometer values to a few files. Probably some sort of openkinect library plus header files so that people can write their own Kinect programs. I would *love* some bindings to a high-level language like Python so that would-be hobbyists can write 3-4 lines of python (“import openkinect”) and start trying ideas with minimal fuss. To win the second contest, you could write any of these libraries, utilities, bindings or simplify installing them on recent versions of Linux/Ubuntu (let’s say 10.04 or greater).

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/open-kinect-contest/

[6souls]

Who needs Suikoden VI when you can have SUIKODEN IV PACHISLOT!!!!!


http://www.siliconera.com/2010/10/27...islot-machine/

The game is being released to honor the 15th Anniversary of Suikoden.

http://ameblo.jp/sutekinahideking/en...696006040.html
http://ameblo.jp/sutekinahideking/en...689048615.html

http://stat001.ameba.jp/user_images/...0837768578.jpg

[OzzofAsura]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo

[Hiryo]

We're still sold out of Kinects in most of this part of new england. Move controllers are also hard to come buy, but not straight up sold out though.

[Shojin]

Opposite here in western MA, went to Best Buy, Gamestop, Target and Walmart yesterday and there was quite a number of Kinect's sitting around. Walmart and Target had no Move controllers in stock (Walmart had a few $100 bundles though), Gamestop had 1 Move and Best Buy had 2 moves out of the 4-5 hangers for them. Best Buy had a Kinect and a Move space set up for demoing, was pretty funny watching a few families get frustrated with the Kinect lol. Best Buy also had an area set up for PS3 3D gaming, but had no glasses sitting out for me to try it out.

[BrokenMonkey]

Ps all the way

[Riposte]

Why the hell would you lock the Blade and Souls thread for a necrobump? The game isn't even out. It is timeless until it comes out and it is timeless afterward considering 1) people can discuss a game at any time in the future, 2) it is a MMO. Worrying about necrobumps make no sense is this subforum. Mods are retarded.

[Riposte]

fyi: This is how you do you job, you refer to the newer thread if there is one. Otherwise you don't lock it.

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/100704-Blade-amp-Soul

[Kuya]

Bumping a thread for a game that isn't out yet is necrobumping? What? Really? What?