Posts Tagged ‘gaming/news’

DSi downloads can be moved—with a little help from Nintendo

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

When the DSi was unveiled last year , one of of the biggest selling points for the unit was that it allowed gamers to shop for applications via an online store. This was great, as it allowed users to buy their games online, which meant they could bypass the middleman without any hassle. But this strength is also a weakness, because Nintendo’s EULA only allows gamers to keep the software they’ve purchased on one console, meaning that if a user somehow breaks his or her handheld, there’s the distinct possibility that the only option to recover their purchases is to pay for them all again. So what happens when the console gets smashed, electrocuted, or is accidentally drowned in a toilet? Is there a way to transfer your old purchases to the replacement system? Replacing content on a PSP Go can be accomplished in a number of ways. By returning to the PlayStation Store and selecting the “download list”, everything you’ve purchased in the past can be re-downloaded, easy as pie. In the case of the DSi, things are slightly more difficult, but it’s still possible to work out a solution.

A flat world: Ars interviews Square-Enix CEO Yoichi Wada

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The Japanese games industry is in trouble. At least, that seems to be the consensus of a number of high-profile developers from that region, especially after this year’s Tokyo Game Show. But Square-Enix—the developer best known for role-playing series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest —isn’t taking the news lying down. Instead, the company has done everything it can to appeal to a more global audience, from publishing and development deals to new acquisitions. Ars sat down with president and CEO Yoichi Wada at the Montreal International Game Summit to discuss the apparent turmoil in the Japanese game industry and what Square-Enix hopes to do about it.

Worth the money? The gaming collector’s edition trend

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

One of the lesser talked about developments this console generation has been the increase in the number—and size—of collector’s editions available. At times it seems that nearly every game has some sort of special version, and major blockbusters feature extravagant and expensive add-ons that range from night vision goggles to batarangs . But do these sets actually drive sales? Ars spoke David Riley from the NPD group to find out. “Limited and Collector’s editions of games have seen a steady increase in sales over the years, particularly in this hardware generation,” Riley told Ars. “At times, retailers work with publishers to provide exclusive bundles, which increases healthy competition and leaves consumers with more to choose from when looking for bundles that appeal to them.

Microsoft’s pseudo sudo patent doesn’t really cover sudo

// November 16th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Righteous indignation erupted on the Internet last week following reports that Microsoft had patented sudo, a traditional command-line tool that is widely used on Linux and some UNIX platforms for selective privilege escalation. Some enthusiastic patent reform advocates predictably held up the patent as an example of the problems that afflict the patent system. The inherent broadness and ambiguity of software patents is arguably a debilitating problem for the software industry and a matter that calls for evaluation of potential reforms, but we’re not so sure that the Microsoft patent in question is as egregious as the critics claim. Granting a patent on the underlying concept of sudo to Microsoft over two decades after the tool was invented by open source developers would indeed be foolish, but that is not at all what happened. A look beyond the short summary of the patent filing and into the body of the patent’s actual claims reveals that Microsoft’s “invention” is really quite different from the sudo command-line tool. It might, however, cover some technologies that have more recently arrived on the Linux desktop.

Week in gaming: Modern Warfare 2 review, Assassin’s Creed

// November 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Did you hear about Modern Warfare 2? You might have missed it; the game needed a little more buzz to get the word out. We take on the PC version to see just how bad the lack of dedicated servers and basic PC amenities hurt the game. What did we find? You’re just going to have to read the review. We also explored banned 360s being sold, we get to play Assassin’s Creed 2 , and the Zune HD gets some games. Here is your week in gaming.

Week in Apple: Software updates, jailbroken iPhone worms, and VESA

// November 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Mac users got some love from Apple this week in the form of an update to Snow Leopard, as well as one for Safari. But it’s not all good news for Apple fans–hackers are out to get jailbroken iPhone users and those running Atom-based hackintoshes will be stuck on Mac OS X 10.6.1. Read on to get the low-down. Mac OS X 10.6.2 out now along with Leopard security update : Come and get your Snow Leopard update to 10.6.2! If you’re still on Leopard, though, security fixes are available as well. Truly malicious iPhone malware now out in the wild : While previous “attacks” on jailbroken iPhones were benign, a variation of the same attack quietly extracts personal data from an infected device. Please, folks, change your default passwords.

Video game sales woes continue; PS3 outsells Xbox 360 again

// November 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The video game industry is still in something of a slump, although the NPD Group’s sales information for October show some interesting trends. “The video games industry suffered another decline this month as compared to last October,” NPD analyst Anita Frazier wrote on the report, although it’s not all bad news. “This is the third best October on record, behind October 2007 and October 2008.” The NPD Group expects to see between $20 billion and $21 billion in full-year revenue in the US this year, compared to last year’s total of $21.3 billion. Let’s see how everyone did.

Cheap to good home: used 360, pirated games, slightly banned

// November 12th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

A big launch can lead to big piracy, especially with the console version of Modern Warfare 2 , which was available online for modded Xbox 360 systems for a week or more before launch. Microsoft knows you shouldn’t be playing the game before its official release, and activity on Xbox Live gives them an easy target. Consequently, an unknown number of consoles have been permanently banned from Xbox Live. The techniques Microsoft uses to separate those who have wrangled early copies of the game from retailers and pirates remain nebulous, but once a console has been banned from Xbox Live, the system is useless to anyone who wishes to play online. That’s a problem—or an opportunity— for the second-hand market, as waves of banned consoles are now up for sale on eBay and craigslist.

Manhunt 2’s AO re-release shows problems with highest rating

// November 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Manhunt 2 wasn’t exactly a masterpiece when it was released in 2007; the backstory of its Adults Only rating and subsequent toning-down to earn the Mature designation was more interesting than the game itself. Of course, it didn’t take long to find out just what had been edited from the game , as a hack was released on the Web that restored the adult version of the game to its before-market glory. Up until now, though, the only way to experience the Adults Only version of the game was to perform an illegal modification. The recent release of an official AO-rated Manhunt 2 via Direct2Drive has brought the title back into the public eye. This release (2 years after its initial release) has highlighted the plight that developers and publishers face when they try to put out a game with content too extreme for the Mature label. Though Rockstar is keeping mum about why it finally decided to let the original game out of its cage, it’s hard to deny that there is a market out there for AO games; it’s just a harder one to reach because of the limitations that go hand-in-hand with the rating.

Firefox turns five: half a decade of Web liberation

// November 9th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Five years ago today, Mozilla announced the official release of Firefox 1.0. The open source Web browser has come a very long way since then and has achieved a level of popularity that few would have imagined possible. The success of Firefox and Mozilla’s unwavering commitment to open Web standards has helped to usher in a new era of vibrance and diversity in the browser market. To commemorate Firefox’s fifth anniversary, we are going to take you back in time for a look at some of our classic coverage of the popular browser. Firefox emerged as an effort to replace the Mozilla Suite’s browser with a lighter alternative based on the same underlying technology. The developers originally called their creation Phoenix, an allusion to their mission of bringing about a Mozilla rebirth. The earliest Phoenix binaries were released to the public in 2002 and began to attract serious attention over the course of the following year.

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