The following Xbox 360 games are shown as being on sale for the memorial day weekend over at Outpost.com.
If you've been wanting any of these titles and didn't grab them when the $39.99 price drops were announced, now may just be the perfect time.
Gamespot is reporting that the folks at Infinium Labs, "makers" of the Phantom game console and Phantom Lapboard are now attempting to change their name from Infinium Labs to Phantom Entertainment. For those unfamiliar with Infinium Labs who may be wondering why I'd put the word "makers" in quotes, since they announced the Phantom game console back in 2002, they have made absolutely nothing. The company seems to exist solely for the purpose of draining investors money and never having a thing to show for it. Quite amazingly, people continue to invest in the company. Perhaps Infinium figures if they change the name of the company, the stink won't hit prospective victims noses as fast as it currently does. I guess they'll soon be asking for a few more million dollars to blow as they try to figure out how to make a PC keyboard.
You'd think after they opened the books back in February and showed that for all the money they took in and squandered on everything but development of their product, there was still nothing to show for it, they would have just folded. Nope, not these guys, they're here for the long haul. As listed by Infinium Labs in their SEC filing for the prospective name change;
"The Board of Directors believes that the name change would be in the best interests of the Company because the new name better reflects the long-term growth strategy of the Company." -Infinium Labs SEC filing as reported by Gamespot
So... the long-term growth strategy of the company is better reflected by the word "Phantom"? - that sounds about right.
Check out our previous articles on Infinium Labs here and here, as well as the Gamespot article here. I still love how the Phantom console is displayed proudly on their homepage when they effectively cancelled the project to work on the Phantom Lapboard.
Major Nelson has updated his blog entry regarding the multiplayer over Live aspect of the Perfect Dark Zero demo. As per the Major, the demo does in fact support multiplayer over Live. More specifically;
""Outpost, the story mode level included in the Demo, is playable co-op over Live. Plaza (a new map included in the upcoming DLC) is playable over Live in Team Killcount and Infection game types. (Bots are included in both game modes.) The disabled Live features are Leaderboards and Custom Match. Quick Match works for both game types" - Major Nelson
The second intermediate version of MAME v.106 has been released on the public. If you like to use the intermediate updates, head over to Mamedev.org and get the new files. A word of caution though, the latest build starts an overhaul of MAME's video system, and as a result there may be many bugs and broken games. Per the MAME what's new file;
"IMPORTANT NOTE: The video system in this version has been completely upended and redesigned. The old video system is still the default; however, some features may be broken. These are not bug-worthy reports, as the old system will soon be deprecated. The new system can be compiled by setting the NEW_RENDER flag on in the makefile.
THE NEW SYSTEM IS STILL WORK-IN-PROGRESS! Apart from video card- related issues (like it doesn't work on particular hardware or has an incorrect display), bugs are not being tracked at this time. There is already a laundry list of things that are broken at the top of render.c, and there are many other things that still need to be looked at.
In order to run the new video system with hardware acceleration, your machine will require DirectX 8 or later." - MAME V.106U2 What's New file
At this point, we'd like to once again suggest that you take the MAME development team's advice and stick with V.106 proper unless you really want to test out the changes. Click here to see what's new in this update.
Gamespot is reporting that Nintendo may have a few more tricks up it's sleeve when it comes to the Wiimote. According to an article posted today, Nintendo has taken out the domain name "wiikaraoke.com" sparking rumors that in addition to there being a speaker built into the Wii's remote control, there will also be some type of microphone. From there, it's only a short jump to the possibility that the Wii could offer Voice over IP features as well. To quote the Gamespot article;
"Besides karaoke games, the obvious application for a Wii-mote-mic would be a voice commands a la Nintendogs or Odama. However, some sites have gone one step further. A string of reports tracing back to a MegaGames.com article speculates that, with the Wii's built-in wireless internet functionality, the Wii-mote could support voice-over IP. That would give it functionality like an Xbox Live headset and could allow it to be used like a phone. As Yanko notes, that would be a very big draw to non-gamers indeed." - Gamespot
Click here to head on over to Gamespot and get the full story. The Wii saga certainly is getting more and more interesting.
Nintendo of America's Vice President of Sales & Marketing and E3 showman Reggie Fils-Aime has been promoted to President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America. In addition to his new task of overseeing day to day operations at Nintendo of America, File-Aimes will continue to be directly in charge of the sales and marketing divisions. I'm sure we all wish Reggie the best in his new position and hope for his continued success in being about kicking ass, taking names and making games.
Kotaku has gotten a scoop from Microsoft on the features in the upcoming Xbox 360 Dashboard update due to hit sometime next week. The biggest things to note in the update are;
Beyond those items, there will also be enhancements made to the systems for DVD playback and photo viewing, support for the Xbox 360 Vision camera and new friends list features. Click here for the full article from Kotaku.
In his blog, Xbox Live's Major Nelson has advised that a demo of Perfect Dark Zero is now available in the Xbox Live Marketplace. The demo features both single player and co-op modes, but does not support multiplayer games via Xbox Live.
Eurogamer has published a response by Jennie Kong, a Sony UK spokesperson stating that the rumor about Sony looking to restrict the sale of used games is false. To quote the Eurogamer article;
""However, a Sony Computer Entertainment UK spokesperson today outright denied that any such message had been conveyed to retailers - telling GI.biz that following conversations with the firm's European parent company, neither division has "any knowledge" of such a strategy."We have definitely not been communicating that," UK spokesperson Jennie Kong confirmed. "It's false speculation. We don't have any further knowledge about this topic - either officially or unofficially, to be frank." - Eurogamer Article
So there you have it folks, Sony goes on the record with more than the regular "We don't comment on rumors" statement and flatly denies the story. From the way the statement from Ms. Kong is worded, it almost sounds like Sony is beginning to get a little tired of the constant negative rumors surrounding the console. Click here to head over to the Eurogamer article.
Kotaku is reporting that at their press conference for fiscal year 2005, a reporter asked Nintendo what the price of the Wii console would be. While Nintendo stated that they would not be announcing a price or release date until a later date, they added that there were no plans to price the console for over 25,000 Yen (approximately $222 U.S.). Nintendo also added that they expected to sell 6 million Wii consoles and 17 million Wii games by March of 2007. Click here to head over to Kotaku for all the pertinent details.
UPDATE 1: It now appears that Nintendo has further clarified the matter by stating that the Wii will not exceed 25,000 Yen in Japan or $250 in the United States. We've corrected the headline to this story accordingly.
