Online retailers mark down Condemned and Ridge Racer 6, but Sega says former game remains full price "as of today."
When it was revealed that $59.99 would be the standard third-party price point for Xbox 360 titles, many-a-gamer lamented. After all, the cost of truly entering the "HD Era," as Microsoft executive J Allard once called the dawn of high-definition gaming, was already plenty high. Besides the $399 a premium Xbox 360 would set you back, gamers would also have to shell out at least $500 for an HDTV. That's not even counting the cost of a subscription to Xbox Live and high-speed Internet service fees for online gaming.
Today came word that two more 360 games would soon bear a smaller sticker price. The online stories for GameStop, EBgames, Amazon, and Best Buy all list Sega's Condemned: Criminal Origins and Namco's Ridge Racer 6 for $39.99.
But while Namco had not returned requests for comment as of press time, Sega did--to deny any price drop had taken place. "We are still at 59.99 for Condemned as of today," a rep told GameSpot. "Sega doesn’t have any product selling at 39.99 for the Xbox 360 at this time."
Calls to several GameStop and EB Games locations added to the confusion. Clerks at both stores said that Ridge Racer 6 was indeed priced at 39.99 new, but that Condemned was priced at $49.99 new.
We don't know a lot at this point, but a group referring to themselves as the Devil360 Team is claiming to have created an Xbox 360 modchip by way of a "small" security hole, one which doesn't have anything to do with the DVD hacks we saw before. Obviously they'd have liked to have launched yesterday (6/6/6, etc.), but apparently they're still working out the kinks in preventing updates from disabling it, allowing it to be programmed from a PC, boot unsigned code (read: homebrew and/or "unauthorized" games), and even utilize a larger hard drive than the somewhat pathetic 20GB part in the Premium edition. Honestly, we'll believe this one when we see it, but we'll be watching closely, whether it be true or some, erm, devilish tomfoolery.
So our good friends over at Joystiq have apparently buddied up to an "insider" at Xbox manufacturer Microsoft (sorry Bill, it wasn't our idea), plied him/her with some promotional swag and design ideas, and come away with details on all your favorite 360 peripherals, including the highly-anticipated Live Vision cam. Still set to launch on September 19th, the XLV camera will reportedly cost $40.00, and included in that price are a wired headset, the card-game-turned-Live-Arcade-hit UNO, and a free one-month Gold subscription to get you hooked on introduce you to the online service.
Joystiq's mole also revealed the following price points for accessories to be released during the "holiday season": $60 for a wireless headset with 30-foot range, another $60 for a 256MB memory module, and $20 each for various game-themed faceplates or a wireless adapter to make 360 gear compatible with your Windows PC. We're still waiting to hear such details as the prices of the wireless racing wheel and HD-DVD add-on, or whether Microsoft will release an un-bundled version of the webcam, so here's to hoping that Joystiq's new friend comes calling again real soon.
According to a a report from Japan's Ultra One magazine, the PS3 will contain a whole PlayStation 2 chipset inside its massive hulk in order to ensure backwards compatibility. Word is that while Sony has claimed the PS3 is powerful enough to handle full PS2 emulation, the actual software isn't ready yet, so they'll use PS2 chips as a stopgap while they finish up. Obviously, the pricey hardware will mean even more losses to Sony at launch, but supposedly once they figure out emulation they'll pull the chips to lower their costs. If this all turns out to be true, it wouldn't be the hugest surprise, since Sony did the very same thing with the PS2 to gain compatibility with the original PlayStation.
The Ultra One article had a few other tidbits of note, including a quote from Sony's Izumi Kawanishi stating that the PS3, as it was announced, is "nothing more than just the basic system." Sony apparently has plenty of upgrades in store for the console, which could make PS3 one of the most diversified (and probably expensive) pieces of "standard" hardware going in the gaming world. They did say that they won't be breaking compatibility, and even if it happens by accident, the console can accept updates over the Internet. Also, the magazine states the console has a "large amount of flash memory," so that no matter what hard drive you end up with, you'll always have the system software running from the included flash.
Mistwalker's second Xbox 360 RPG delayed; Blue Dragon still on track for release this year.
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TOKYO--The phrases "Japanese Xbox 360 role-playing game" and "Hironobu Sakaguchi" have practically become synonymous during the course of the past year, as the former Square producer has been developing a trio of new RPGs that are exclusive to Microsoft's new system. Almost every Xbox 360 meeting in Japan has featured an appearance by Sakaguchi, and today's press conference was no exception. While the Mistwalker president didn't unveil anything earth-shattering, he did give updates on his previously announced projects, including a slip in the release date for Lost Odyssey.
While his second Xbox 360 may be a little further off than expected, Sakaguchi revealed that development on his first Xbox 360 game, Blue Dragon, is right on track for a release by the end of the year.
"We're right in the middle of development right now," Sakaguchi said of Blue Dragon. "It's hectic every day. Even today, I have to go to the studio to attend the voice recording right after I finish talking here."
He added, "It's a pretty rare case, but Blue Dragon's development is progressing very smoothly. It can already run on the Xbox 360 [in real time] with things such as the battle phases and event scenes connected together... During the next few months, we'll be working on the stage direction [of events and scenes] and balancing the game."
On the other hand, Lost Odyssey still has a ways to go, and its release is slated for 2007. Sakaguchi will release a demo of the game in the summer or fall, which will feature about 20 minutes of the opening sequence. Sakaguchi said he showed the game's character designer Takehiko Inoue an incomplete version of the opening scene, which was met with positive feedback.
Sakaguchi is also working on a third project for the Xbox 360 named Cry On, which will be an action RPG codeveloped with AQ Interactive.
A quarter of a century later, we still can't seem to stop destroying our own ship in this seminal arcade shooter, soon to be found on Xbox 360s everywhere.
It's a safe bet that Galaga is older than a lot of you reading this article, yet Microsoft and Namco Bandai have teamed up to bring one of the most hallowed classics of yesteryear's arcade to everyone's favorite virtual arcade on Xbox Live. Would you even believe it's been 25 years since Galaga set hearts aflame in shopping malls and pizza parlors all over the country? Whether you lazed away the early '80s spending quarters by the bucketful in pursuit of a high score, or you've never even played this simplistic but addicting space shooter, the version of Galaga we've been playing looks like it'll be worth a handful of Microsoft points when it finally shows up on Live Arcade.
Emulating a game like Galaga on hardware as powerful as the Xbox 360's can't be too difficult, and indeed even the prerelease build we downloaded plays exactly like the old arcade game. If you somehow don't know how the game works, well, for shame! But we'll go easy on you and explain. Like Space Invaders before it, Galaga lets you control a space fighter horizontally at the bottom of the screen while insectlike alien enemies swoop down and fire shots at you from above. Some enemies can capture your ship if you get caught in their tractor beam, which docks you one life--but if you can then destroy the enemy imprisoning your captive ship, you'll gain the coveted dual ship for double the firepower. But you can also destroy that ship with a wayward shot, which means you just wasted a life, you loser.
As with most arcade games of the era, Galaga is all about the endless quest for the high score, so you pretty much just play it ad nauseam until you can't take anymore. A few very minor additions have been made to the experience, but nothing that will radically change the way you play. There's now a rapid-fire button in addition to the single-shot version, but this merely fires two shots in quick succession. In other words, it doesn't make you fire anymore shots at a time than when you shoot manually, it just fires them a little closer together than you can do with your thumb. A stage select also opens up as you play through the game that lets you begin new games from later stages. You still start out with no points when using this option, though, so this is basically just to let you skip the easier early stages and begin with more of a challenge.
Of course, leaderboards will be available so you can rank your scores against those of people who spend way too much time playing this game. But Live Arcade will only keep track of your ranked scores if you leave the few changeable options at their defaults. These include your starting number of lives and the score interval at which you get extra lives. If you want to make the game a little easier on yourself (you weakling), you can shirk the arcade rules, but if you want to see your name in lights up on the scoreboard, you'll have to leave them alone.