World of Warcraft Tuesday Maintenance A Thing of the Past
December 24, 2006
1up has the news that Tuesday maintenance will no longer be the way of the future for World of Warcraft. This is a big change from the weekly several-hour downtime that the company has used for the past two years. From the official post: “In the upcoming weeks, we will be testing the effect of a live maintenance, where regular maintenance tasks are run during off-peak with realms live. On Tuesday, December 26 there will be no scheduled downtime for weekly maintenance. We will perform all necessary maintenance tasks while the realms are live. We are anticipating the possibility that we may need to perform rolling restarts off-peak if we find that a realm restart is necessary; however the downtime for each realm would be less than 10 minutes if it was required.” Is this really that big a deal? I know that the timeframe had to be inconvenient for EU players on the U.S. servers, but was a couple of hours of downtime early in a workday really such a burden?
Gaming Gets a ‘Crossfire’
December 24, 2006
N’Gai at Newsweek has up a quick article highlighting the start of a series that could be considered gaming’s answer to ‘Crossfire’. Hosted by the GameTrailers site, “Bonus Round” is set to be a frequently-produced show highlighting and discussing issues in gaming from multiple viewpoints. Geoff Keighley (writer of Behind the Game and host of Spike’s Game Head, among many other things) will play frontman for the show, and the first episode has a few notable names sitting down to talk about the Wii. From the article: “The staff at GameTrailers were kind enough to provide Level Up with an exclusive preview of the next ‘Bonus Round’ segment–shown above–where an analyst (Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter), a composer (Tommy Tallarico) and the producer of the hit videogame Scarface (Vivendi’s Peter Wanat) discuss Nintendo’s Wii. In 2007, Keighley and the folks at GameTrailers plan to produce new episodes on a monthly schedule, with a wider variety of guests and a broader set of topics, including micropayments (such as the purchase of a 99-cent song from iTunes) and emerging trends in game design.”
Guitar Hero Lawsuit Settled
December 24, 2006
1up is reporting that Red Octane and Ant Commandos have settled their lawsuits over 3rd party Guitar Hero controllers. From the article: “Fortunately both sides have now officially reached an agreement - though nobody really knows what form that agreement has taken. Details of the settlement remain private - but we DO know this much: The judge has officially dismissed the case. That’s good news for people just wanting to rock the hell out over the holidays.”
A Look Back at the Year in Games
December 24, 2006
The excellent Stephen Totilo runs down memorable moments from this year in games, from the perspective of MTV Multiplayer. (Flash site, make sure and stop the ad quickly to avoid brainburn.) From the article: “On a rain-soaked Wednesday afternoon we drove south from Austin to Buda and got a look at the Rooster Teeth digs. One of the guys, the heavily tattooed Geoff Fink, sat Sway down at a bank of Xbox 360s and recording equipment to explain how the ‘Halo’ machinima gets made. Sway got the details, but we couldn’t wrap the interview without asking Fink about a detail we highlighted in our old Rooster Teeth story — the foot thing. Sway noticed that Fink had nine Xbox 360 controllers at the recording station and enough systems to allow them to be used at the same time — but Rooster Teeth doesn’t have nine gamer/actors to wield them. They solve this problem by wielding multiple controllers at once, some with their hands and some with their feet. We needed a demonstration and got one, captured on film.”
A History of Game Consoles, As Seen on TV
December 22, 2006
PC World is running a great retrospective on videogame consoles, looking all the way back to Atari’s pong. The best part is, they’re doing it via television ads for the systems. The article features highly entertaining blipverts for Pong, the Fairchild, the VCS, the 2600, the Intellivision, the Odyssey, Vectrex, Colecovision, the Atari 5200, and many, many more. From the article: “Gamers were tiring of PONG consoles, and Fairchild Instrument and Camera’s Channel F console offered a fresh new alternative. It featured programmable ‘videocarts’ containing ROM chips and code, as opposed to the dedicated circuits that the Magnavox Odyssey’s plug-in cards used. The cartridge concept emerged as an industry standard, and is still used in handheld gaming devices today.”
360 vs. PS3 vs. Wii - The Designer’s Perspective
December 22, 2006
Gamasutra is running a piece today written by Ernest Adams, a frequent contributor to the site and an amusingly opinionated game designer. He writes to weigh in on the console war debate from the perspective of a game designer. He runs down the usual list of pros and cons for each machine, and then digs into the most creative aspects of each machine. Finally, lays out what he sees as the end result of this hardware generation: “So who, at the end of the day, will be the also-ran in this generation of consoles? On the global scale, I’d say it could well be neither the PS3 or the Wii, but the Xbox 360. The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine available. The Wii will skim off the younger players and those who don’t have as much money to spend. Both have the advantage of being made in Japan, so they’ll crowd the Xbox right out of that market. In the US and Europe, it’s harder to say, but I see the Xbox’s early start as more of a liability than a benefit.”
Virtual Console Christmas is Retrotastic
December 22, 2006
1up reports the good news that we’re finally going to be seeing some of those great Virtual console games here in the U.S.. You know, the ones the Japanese have been enjoying since launch? Christmas day should see the release of Super Mario Bros, Toejam & Earl, R-Type (Turbografx 16), Street Figher II: The World Warrior, and Super Castlevania. The scintillating Baseball and Urban Champion will be making an appearance on New Year’s Day. These last two dubious additions will put the Virtual Console lineup at 33 games.
Brain Wave Videogame Championship
December 22, 2006
holy_calamity writes “The Science Museum in London is hosting a Mindball Championship next week. Pairs of opponents wired up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines use their brain waves to push a ball towards an opponent. The challenge is that to win, the players have to relax — the ball only responds to theta waves (4-8 Hz) associated with drowsiness or alpha waves (8-12 Hz) associated with being relaxed. ” The winner gets the title of Britain’s Most Relaxed Mind. So … good luck, lazy people.
Dragons to disco: Choice of youth video games widens
December 21, 2006
Reuters - This holiday season
offers a mother lode of games for children and teens, starring
flying dragons, adventurous Santas, dancing Disney characters,
colourful blobs and rhythm agents.
Can Nintendo Break the Gamer Barrier with Opera Browser?
December 21, 2006
NewsFactor - The creation of a special Web browser for the Wii console might very well be appealing to Wii gamers, but its presence on the Wii might aslso help expand the appeal of the platform beyond gamers.
