An Open Letter To Glenn Beck

In response to this, I’ve decided to draft a short message:

To Glenn Beck:

I have a lot of respect for you and your opinions. I especially appreciate the way you’ve been able to overcome and rise above adversity, and there have been many times I’ve found your views to be especially salient and meaningful.

Unfortunately, I find that I strongly disagree with the way you have recently portrayed video games and especially bloggers. Read the rest of this entry »

New Xbox 360 Chipset in August?

Falcon, meet Jasper. That’s the codename for the latest Xbox 360 chipset, the task has been assigned to IBM and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The new chips, which utilize the ATI Xenos graphics and memory controller hub, will use less noise, less electricity and less complex cooling systems. I’m down for all those new features because as I type this, I can’t help but hear my very noisy and faulty Xbox 360 in the background while GTA IV is on pause and Grid is downloading.

Could this refined machine also come equipped with the reported Blu-Ray? I think so. We will find out at the end of the Summer.

GRID Demo on Xbox Live

Codemasters’ newest racing title: Grid now has a demo available on XBL. The ‘Codies are the brilliant folks behind DIRT, which I absolutely loved and still do, and TOCA Race Driver series. Grid is quite similar to DIRT in not only presentation, but in entering events, earning reputation points for performance, and opening up new events as you go.

I’m looking forward to firing up this demo. For the racing fans out there, let us know how it measures up to the other biggies including, but not limited to: Forza, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed and Project Gotham Racing.

More on Major Nelson

Aeropodcast #31: Z Or Zed In Other Parts of the World

This week, Josh, aka Z from Tripletags.com was nice enough to join us to talk about their site and add insight to our gaming podcast. We also decide to break out into an acapella version of Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills”. Scary, so make sure to have ear protection at that point in the podcast. We also go in-depth on a little new release you might of heard of, Grand Theft Auto IV.

Download the podcast from here or subscribe to the podcast using one of the services below:

iTunes | RSS | Odeo | Digg | Zune

New Wii Channel now available

So as we all know, the Nintendo Channel was announced last month with US due-date of mid-May. Well, we must have hit mid-May because waiting for me when I got home from work tonight was a new update and the ability to download the Nintendo Channel. So far my experience has mixed reviews. Read the rest of this entry »

Mass Effect, Spore DRM Are a Step In the Right Direction

Electronic Arts let loose their new attempts at DRM (digital rights management), on the upcoming version of Mass Effect and Spore. And while the Internet community immediately castigated Electronic Arts for DRM, for once, I can at least see a positive step in the right direction, albeit with some caveats.

Basically, when you buy Mass Effect or Spore, they will initially want to validate your serial number at the time of install. They will again check the serial number by every 10th day via the Internet. This allows them to build a list of serial numbers that are posted to warez sites, or Usenet forums and ban them. The repeat serial checks, will validate against a constantly updating list. This will also allow for the games to be played without a disc in the drive, which is where protection schemes like SecuROM and Star Force have been known to cause problems.

Read the rest of this entry »

GTA IV Sales Stats

Microsoft’s Gamerscore team just sent us some GTA IV sales statistical goodness to munch on. Here are the highlights:

• Xbox 360 console sales at retail went up 54%
• More than 60% of all GTA games sold in the first week were the Xbox 360 version
• Roughly 40% of new consoles selling with a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV

It’s great to see the console sales go up, but I hope there’s a patch to fix the crashing and freezing soon on the Xbox 360 or there will be a lot of new angry buyers. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had umpteen freezes and just plain BSD (Black Screens of Death) in single player mode since I started playing a week ago. The PS3 version just received a patch from Rockstar today to reduce strain on the GameSpy servers, thus eliminating lockups. No word on the Xbox 360 version yet, but I’m guessing it’s around the corner.

As for the PS3’s smitten piggyback ride on GTA IV’s popularity, it’s obvious that momentum is picking up for it and that’s great, but is it enough to put it back in the spotlight?

Read more on Xbox Live stats:

Read the rest of this entry »

We Ski! It’s the most X skiing game on the Wii.

I was just laughing to myself about this Balance-Board compatible skiiing game that Namco Bandai is bringing to Wii shortly. Well, not about the game exactly, but rather about the text on the official website. It seems that We Ski is not only “the most exciting skiing game to hit the Wii,” but it’s also “the most intuitive skiing game on the Wii.” Most entertaining of all is that they never mention it’s the only skiing game on the Wii. Snowboarding, as in SSX Blur, hardly counts.

This is advertising folks, and I understand that. That doesn’t make it any less entertaining. Read on for the press release, which is decidedly less comedic than the website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Buzz on Haze Isn’t Just Nectar

The Haze demo is slated to land on the PlayStation Store in North America tomorrow, and early buzz on the title is very good on the gameplay, and just good on the visuals and sound. Mccomber over at TripleTags might have scooped up the demo from the EU store to write up his impressions, but I’m glad he did and that he seems to give things an even-handed evaluation in his comments. I don’t know anyone who would rather have a game with those things switched — we all want very good gameplay.

It’s easy to dismiss a shooter this delayed out of hand, but if he’s right and Free Radical’s shooter pedigree carries it over the finish line with tight controls and integration of the Nectar performance enhancer it could be a good sleeper hit when it reaches retail in a couple of weeks. It’s also become a PS3 exclusive, but given how late it was it’s been the focus of some suspicion. Personally I wouldn’t think anyone but a massive development house could handle development on three platforms simultaneously for something as ambitious as a first person shooter trying to make it in the big bad genre currently dominated by Call Of Duty 4 and Halo 3.

Impressions from TripleTags, demo mentioned on PS3Fanboy.

Mirror’s Edge Trailer

What? No shooting? Mirror’s Edge is a new take on the First Person Action Adventure from DICE who are known for creating unique games like Equestrian, racing and pinball. You play as a gymnastic, law avoiding female named Faith who leaps, vaults and slides over buildings and obstacles ala Crackdown, except you have only seconds to analyze your surroundings before making your next move. The game looks impressive visually and is a nice change from the grungy, dirty sepia tone games we’ve seen over the last few years.