Laser Sharks

A pirated copy of Grand Theft Auto IV was leaked to the internet by a group called iCON earlier this week. Initially, just the iCON leaked just the PAL version but now the NTSC version is available as well. The previous entry to the Grand Theft Auto series, San Andreas, was also leaked early on the internet. However, the early leak certainly did not harm game sales - San Andreas has sold over 21.5 million copies.

iCON also issued a strong warning against playing the game on Xbox Live before its official release, as that would basically put a large bullseye for Microsoft on any console modders. iCON is also encouraging people who download the pirated copy to purchase the full game once it is released saying that “R* deserves it.”

It would be surprising if the Swedes that run thepiratebay.org were to suddenly start apologizing or feeling shame for running one of the largest torrent sites on the internet. However, they it is a bit surprising to see that they have changed their main page logo to say “Liberty City” to correspond with the recent leak of Grand Theft Auto IV.

The Pirate Bay frequently changes their main page image, but it is unexpected to see such a timely logo change. Traffic is still light on the torrents, most like due to a requirement to mod an Xbox 360 to be able to play it. Remember kids, stealing is bad!

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Microsoft announced in its 10-Q report that its Entertainment and Devices Division, home to the Xbox, turned an $89 million dollar profit during the fiscal quarter (Q3) ending March 31. During the same quarter one year ago, the division lost $746 million. The division had total sales of $1.58 billion in the third quarter, an increase in 68% from the a year ago. Microsoft EDD division has also experienced revenue growth over the past 9 months, up 34% to 6.58 $billion.

Microsoft is attributing most of the gains to the success of the Xbox 360, claiming that it sold 1.3 millions units in Q3, 7.5 million units in the past nine months, and 19 million overall.

Microsoft stated in the report that,

“During the three months ended March 31, 2008, Xbox platform and PC game revenue increased $418 million or 85% primarily as a result of increased Xbox 360 console sales, Xbox 360 video game sales, and Xbox Live revenue,” the company said. “Xbox platform and PC game revenue increased $1.4 billion or 42% during the nine months ended March 31, 2008, as a result of increased Xbox 360 console sales, video game sales led by Halo 3, Xbox Live revenue, and Xbox 360 accessory sales.”

The upcoming release of GTA IV from Rockstar Games will no doubt help boost Xbox 360 sales as well. Overall in Q3, Microsoft reported revenues of $14.45 billion and operating income of $4.41 billion.

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EA has been pursuing publisher Take Two Interactive since mid-February when the video game giant offer a $2 billion buyout. Take Two refused the initial offer but EA continued pursuing the company stating in a letter that “if you are unwilling to proceed on that basis, however, we may pursue other means, including the public disclosure of this letter, to bring our offer and the compelling value it represents to the attentions of Take-Two’s shareholders.” If the takeover is successful, EA will have control of hit franchises such as 2K Sports, Midnight Club, Bioshock, The Elder Scrolls, and most notably, Grand Theft Auto.

EA has a reputation within the gaming community for being unwilling to take risk, pushing out annual games just with minimal improvements, and using microtransactions to charge for things that other publishers give out for free. Take Two, although having a reputation outside of the gaming industry is less than good, its reputation inside the gaming community is stellar.

TheGamingReviews.com wrote an article about the worst things that EA could do to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Here is the summary of the article below.

EA Trax Replaces Radio Stations

The radio stations have been crucial in creating the setting and mood throughout the Grand Theft Auto series.  In fact, the Vice City soundtrack is probably the best collection of 80s music ever created. However, EA may think it is better to institute their own brand of licensed music with the dreaded EA Trax that everyone tries to turn off when loading up an NHL or Madden game. Speaking of other EA properties, no doubt the company would see that just like real life radio, the air waves permeating Liberty City would also be a great way to keep you informed of whatever other EA products are being released.

Capitalizing on Downloadable Content

Changing clothes and adding accessories is a staple of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. EA, with their history of abusing microtransactions, would see the potential of putting all of these virtual items to good use.  Imagine having to pay real dollars for a nice new jacket, sunglasses, shotgun or even in the worst case, cars themselves. Like it or not, GTA is a prime candidate for downloadable transactions that go far beyond a little episodic content. Despite their folding at the outcry over purchasing guns in Battlefield: Bad Company, no amount of torrential wailing from gamers could stop them from being tempted to pick such low hanging fruit.

Annual Releases

Big franchises such as Rainbow Six and Guitar Hero have move to a yearly release to suck the maximum amount of money from gamers’ pockets. EA is certainly not a stranger to this trend with their yearly lineup of sports franchises.  EA may push for an annual GTA game which, as evident from other annual releases, would suffer from a lack of improvements from game to game and difficulty in creating new settings. Who else is looking forward the GTA: Topeka?

Driving Rockstar Away

In order to keep up with an increased number of games (see Annual Releases), publishers have started using alternate developers for games such as Call of Duty 3 and Guitar Hero 3. These games never seem to match the magic of the games from the original developers. There are lots of GTA clones that are released every year, but none of them live up to the game created by Rockstar. Take Two was smart enough to leave Rockstar alone and let them create their art. EA does not have such a good track record of handling developers that they purchase.

Giving In to the Man

The Grand Theft Auto franchise is a very controversial one. Mass media, mothers, and Jack Thompson all hate the series. GTA has made a lot of money for Take Two, but Take Two has also spent a lot of money defending GTA in legal battles. Would a company like EA, which may not have a particularly sparkling clean image in the gaming community but certainly does outside of it, be willing to take responsibility for such scandalous software? Would they try to release a “T” rated version with toned-down violence, humor, and edginess? While some PR problems within the gaming community are one thing, getting criticized from the government and society at large probably isn’t something EA wants, given that they’re an even easier target than Take 2.

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Mortal Kombat 8 is actually going to be a spin-off game called “Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe. Apparently, Midway is hoping to cash in on some of the Marvel vs. Capcom and Marvel vs. SNK popularity. Although it seems like MK vs DC was announced about a decade too late, it is actually shipping this Fall for Xbox 360 and PS3. There is another plot twist in the newest iteration of Mortal Kombat - it has been confirmed to have a “Teen” rating. This is most likely a concession to DC Comics. Midway is still including lots of blood and bone-crunching moves, but the over the top fatalities that angered mobs of overly-concerned parents in the 1990s are gone.

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According to videogamer.com , Comedian Ricky Gervais is going to make a cameo appearance in Rockstar’s upcoming game Grand Theft Auto IV.  Liberty City will feature a comedy club in addition to bowling alleys and bars in its latest iteration of the ultra-popular, ultra-controversial open world game.

Gervais told men’s magazine ShortList in an interview that he would appear in GTAIV as one of the stand-up acts in the comedy club. His avatar will perform approximately 3 minutes of new material in addition to excerpts from his hit tour Fame. Gervais also confirmed that he would appear in the game outside of the comedy club, but refused to elaborate.

Quotes from Ricky Gervais in ShortList:

“It’s a first - which always interests me. It was shot in New York, my favourite place in the world, and I got to wear a tight lycra suit as part of the digital process. No, hold on, that wasn’t so good.”

“Unfortunately they captured the whole horror, except I look slightly tougher. It is seriously a big deal, though. Games have outsold Hollywood for the past few years so it’s nice to be a small part of that.”

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Assassin’s Creed Lead Engineer Mathieu Mazerolle was asked the big question; how do the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions stack-up against each other?

Our goal is to ship the two versions of [Assassin’s Creed] to be within 5% or less of difference between each other. That doesn’t mean the PS3 is 5% “better” or “worse”, it’s really just an approximation and a statement that while the two versions are very similar, there will be (as there always is) small, hopefully inperceptible, differences between the two versions within a very small threshold.

He also added:

Both machines are very complex and have very distinct strengths and weaknesses, so it’s almost impossible to quantify these sorts of comparisons - we just want to make the game as good as it can be on both platforms, and owners of both consoles will get the same experience from playing [Assassin’s Creed].

At X07 when asked about the benefit of Blu-Ray versus standard DVD Mathieu told us that even if UbiSoft wanted to add a new piece of content to the Xbox 360 version of Assassin’s Creed the DVD version is already at capacity.

He clarified:

As far as adding extra content, it’s not really an issue: we have all the content we need for the game fitting on a DVD as it is, and the game wouldn’t necessarily be better by just by adding “stuff” on the disk: the biggest limitation for us isn’t disk space, it’s squeezing every last drop of performance out of the processors on both consoles to make the game as cool as possible on the screen!

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EGM has received tons of hate mail since they awarded Halo 3 with the “Best A.I. of E3″ honor and stuck Killzone 2 with ”Worst A.I. of E3.”  There have been the typical cries of bias and fanboyism.  EGM Editor Dan Hsu has fan the fires of this debate on his blog with an FAQ style response.

Microsoft game vs. a Sony game. How convenient.
OK, that wasn’t really a question, but it’s a legit comment. We didn’t pick Halo 3 and Killzone 2 specifically to go against each other or to cause extra controversy. We voted as a staff (including the entire 1UP Network, which includes 1UP.com and GameVideos.com), and we honestly and independently came up with Halo 3 at the top of the list for best A.I. and Killzone 2 at the “top” for worst. We didn’t even think of it as Microsoft vs. Sony thing until we realized that both games won their respective categories.

But is it fair to pick Halo 3 because you guys actually got a chance to play it? Versus Killzone 2, which was only on demo, played by the developers.
Good question, but no…our previous hands-on experience with Halo 3 (for our last cover story) did not factor into the voting. Very few of us actually played single-player Halo 3 when we did our cover story, and when I voted, I kept that game time out of mind for these awards. I based my best/worst A.I. votes purely on what was shown to me at E3…and Halo 3 and Killzone 2 were both on equal grounds there. Both were not playable by us, only played for us by their respective developers, and based on those E3 demos and those demos alone, we voted the way we did. I saw excellent A.I. from Halo 3 specifically from the E3 demo, and I saw an extreme example of bad A.I. from Killzone 2 (see below)…also at E3. That’s why I voted for those two games for those respective categories.

But there’s gotta be some other, lesser-profile games with worse A.I. than Killzone 2.
Based on what we’ve seen and what we voted on, totally fairly, Killzone 2 nabbed the award. Part of the problem is, the Killzone 2 showed some very noticeable flaws. It wasn’t like the enemies were just standing around. Like we mentioned in the write-up, the bad guys were actually jumping out of cover to get *in* the line of fire. It’s like they wanted to get shot. That alone, unfortunately, made Killzone 2 look worse (A.I.-wise) than it probably is.

So you guys hate Killzone 2, huh?
Shut up, you stupid FAQ man. The write-up in EGM greatly compliments Killzone 2 as a whole. We’re just making fun of one specific thing: that whole “jumping out of cover” business.

OK, then you must hate Sony.
Heh, check out how many good awards the company picked up in the same feature. Oh by the way–this should be obvious, but in case you didn’t know, moneyhats are mutually exclusive. You can’t accept one from Microsoft *AND* Sony at the same time. It’s in the contracts.

Oh by the way again–this should be obvious, but in case you didn’t know, I was joking just now.

Isn’t it unfair to compare a game that’s still months away from release (Killzone 2) to a game that’s almost finished (Halo 3)?
Oh, for sure, but that’s part of the problem for any E3 judging…all games are at different points in their development. But we still have E3 awards in EGM. We still have our annual E3 opinionated guide in EGM. The industry even has its own E3 awards. Are all of them fair? No…not if you look at how far along each individual title is in its development. But then again, yes…the companies are putting these products out for the media to see, and as we’ve done many times in the past, we’ll judge them (knowing full well they’re incomplete games). So in the context of these being E3 games and E3 demos, we’re treating them all equally and as fairly as possible.

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On the Halo series page at Wikipedia, an edit originated from Sony Computer Entertainment casts aspersions on Microsoft’s Halo 3. In the Halo 3 section of the Halo page, Sony added “(Halo 3) wont look any better than Halo 2.” (See the first and second story images attached below.) Since then, the Halo page has been corrected and locked from further vandalism.

The WikiScanner discovery is reported on Wired’s ‘Threat Level’. The report and IP address have been checked by Wired senior editor Kevin Poulsen, (i.e., see the third attached image for Poulsen’s comments; “Sony insults Halo 3″ is the second report after the Walmart report.)

Finally, the forth and last image was taken from a ‘Whois’ search at the RIPE.net database for “217.18.23.2″, the IP address recorded by Wikipedia as having edited the Halo page. The query shows that 217.18.23.2 is registered to SCEE (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) Liverpool Studios in Great Britain. The result also shows the studio’s physical address, phone number, and email address.

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Sorry about being away for so long.  Business trips and laziness have combined to make for some really bad posting.  I want to send out a special apology to Rob.  I know your day was not complete without the latest updates from Lasersharks.

There is an updated confirmed track list for Guitar Hero III.  Check it out here.

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Xbox Live user OBsIV has created a mod that allows the Wii remote and nunchuk to be used on your Xbox 360. The Xbox 360 Input Machine (XIM) lets any PC input device work on the Xbox 360. Since the Wii controllers have already been hacked to work on a PC, this XIM mod allows them to be used. Here’s the original posting on teamxbox.com.

Here’s a wonderful video showing this mod in action with Halo 2…and it looks like it works more intuitively than current Wii FPS games.

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EA announced recently that it will discontinue online services for pretty much any game that doesn’t have ‘07 written at the end of the title. The full list of games losing online support are as follows:

September 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Arena Football (PlayStation 2, Xbox)
FIFA Soccer 06 (Xbox 360, PC)FIFA Soccer 06 (PS2, PSP, PC, Xbox)
Fight Night Round 3 (PSP, Xbox)
Madden NFL 06 (Xbox 360, PC, PS2, PSP, Xbox)
Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects (PS2, Xbox)
MVP 07 NCAA Baseball (PS2, Xbox)
NASCAR 06 Total Team Control (PS2, Xbox)
NBA Live 06 (Xbox 360, PC, PS2, PSP, Xbox)
NCAA Football 2005 (Xbox)
NCAA Football 2006 (PS2, Xbox)
NCAA March Madness 06 (PS2, Xbox)
NFL Head Coach (PC, Xbox, PS2)
NHL 06 (PC, PS2, Xbox)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 (Xbox 360, Xbox)
November 1, 2007 Online Service Shutdown
Need for Speed Underground 1 (PC, PlayStation 2)
Need for Speed Underground 2 (PC, PlayStation 2)
Burnout Revenge (Xbox, Playstation 2)
Need for Speed Most Wanted (PSP, Xbox)

I highlighted the games that I thought it was most interesting they were canceling service.

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Some decisions in life are obviously more important than others.  There are the decisions such as where to go to college, who to marry, where to live, and when to retire.  Then there are the really important decisions, like who to partner with to play through Halo 3’s campaign the first time.  This helpful guide will aid you in selecting the best partners for your first time through Halo 3.  After all, you want your first time to be special.

1.  Do you have the same schedule?
Do not try to partner up with the guy who works the evening shift if you are in bed every night by 9 PM.  Ideally, you have a set time that everyone gets together and plays.  Lacking this, everyone involved should at least usually be available to play around the same time of day.

2. Will there be any connection issues?
First you must decided if you are going to play System Link or over Xbox Live.  If you decided on System Link, as long as everyone lives close enough to regularly get together then connection issues will not be a problem.  If you choose to play over Xbox Live, then it is a good idea to ensure everyone has a good connection to each other.  Do not include your friend with the roommate who refuses to shut off his P2P downloads.  Also, do not invite the guy who is using ICS to connect to Xbox Live through his dial-up connection.

3. Are you really friends with this person?
If possible, pick someone who is your friend outside of Xbox Live.  xX cr4zy Co0t3r 69 Xx may be good for a pickup match of Gears of War, but if you don’t know even know somebody’s real name, chances are you will have trouble getting them to keep a steady gaming commitment.  Ideally, you should know real names, cell phone numbers, and home addresses of the people with whom you are co-oping.  If game times need to change, you should be able to contact a person directly and not have to just hope that he checks his Xbox Live messages.

4. Is this person actually into the game?
It may seem like a good idea to play through the game with the cute girl you just met who tells you how she enjoys video games and wants likes Halo.  The problem is that some people will tell you anything to make you like them.  You do not want to have to lead a casual gamer who is having problems using two joysticks through the game.  Pick someone who has a proven record of Halo love.  I have known a lot of cute girls.  I have known a lot of hardcore Halo fans.  I have never personally known anyone who is in both groups.  There are obviously some exceptions.

5. Is this someone you will enjoy playing a game with?
You want someone who takes the game seriously.  You do not want someone who takes the game too seriously.  We have all had friends who are “controller throwers.”  They get mad whenever they lose a game and say things that would make a sailor blush.  Losing or dying is so bad to them that it ruins their whole day will let you know about it.  If you tell them to relax, they will utter something about just being highly competitive.  Whenever someone says they are highly competitive, what they mean is “I am a jerk.”  You do not want to go through nine levels of Halo 3 with a jerk.

6. How will the gameplay styles mesh?
Most gamers seem to have at least one of each type of friends.  The first guy is a great sniper who can hit players flying through the air from the passenger seat of the Warthog.  The second guy is the one who refuses to play with anything but the sniper rifle and gets mad if the first guy, or anyone else, picks it up.  These two do not work well together.  It is preferrable to have the first guy on your team, but perhaps he is not available.  You can still have fun with the second guy, but only as long as he is not constantly taking the sniper from someone much better than him.  Basically, make sure everyone knows their role on the team.  Who will play point?  Who should stay back and snipe?  Everything runs much smoother when everyone meshes together.

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