Modern Warfare 3 On Xbox 360

Modern Warfare 3 comes out guns blazing on Xbox 360 and ater effects was followed by thunderous applause. Modern Warfare 3 will help the Xbox 360 to another record year or not? Modern Warfare 3 is slated for a November 8 release.

The show began with the familiar Xbox 360 graphic that you see every time you fire up the 360. But once the image left, the green hue remained, and formed a now familiar 3. With that, Microsoft showed off an early stage for Modern Warfare 3, which was being played live. The level was set in New York — or more precisely under it, as you begin the game as a soldier named “Frost”, who is in full diving gear and making his way through a flooded tunnel leading into New York. Frost and his team emerge in the harbor and are hunting an enemy sub. Once they find it, they plant explosives which force the ship to the surface. Once you break the water, you get your first glance of New York. The familiar skyline is radically different, as missiles continue to decimate the skyscrapers, and fires cast a smoke cloud over the city. Frost and his team then board the sub and fight their way to the control room, where they launch missiles on themselves to sink the sub for good. Next an escape on a raft through the New York harbor begins, and as Frost cuts around, over, and even under the remains of a naval fleet. Although the section of the game was fairly short, it was also impressive and had the audience enthralled. The game is not an Xbox 360 exclusive, but any future expansions for Modern warfare 3 will be released on Xbox Live at least a month before they are released elsewhere. It may also be a not so subtle reminder that the Call of Duty series is thriving on XBL, while the PS3 version hasn’t been all that playable lately thanks to the PSN shenanigans.

 

inFAMOUS 2 – PS3 Game Review

infamous 2 is a single player, Open World game, exclusive to PlayStation 3. The second chapter in the best selling infamous franchise, this immersive adventure offers a powerful, emotional, and visceral take on being a superhero. Blamed for the destruction of Empire City and haunted by the ghosts of his past, Cole must make a dramatic journey to discover his full super-powered potential and face the final confrontation with a dark and terrifying enemy from his own future.

Will You Save Humanity or Destroy It All?
Cole MacGrath is back, more confident and with more focused energy burst abilities. Blamed for the destruction of Empire City, Cole must make a dramatic journey to discover his full super-powered potential – and face the final confrontation with a dark and terrifying enemy. This being, a creature of pure power and destruction is annihilating the East Coast. To stop this menace, Cole must find the key to unlocking his undiscovered powers hidden deep within New Marais. Standing in the way is a power-hungry dictator that will stop at nothing to rid him from the city. Gain enough power to defeat The Beast or witness the destruction of the world. The power is in your hands.

Gameplay
Like its predecessor, infamous 2 is a single player Action-Adventure game set in an Open World game environment. Players take on the role of Cole, the returning anti-hero from the first game. Possessing electric burst abilities through his hands Cole has matured a bit as a superhero type, being more confident and focused in his abilities. He uses these abilities, as well as improved melee possibilities to battle enemies both large and small in mission-based gameplay. Along with combat, choice remains a big part of the game, with an improved morality system that allows for two separate endings to the game, depending on the choices that Cole makes.

User Generated Content
Unlike the original game in the series, infamous 2 contains significant user generated content tools that dramatically expand gameplay possibilities. Centered around a creation tool system, this allows players to create original missions and share them with other players via PlayStation Network. These function more or less as side quests once they are accepted, adding to the player’s point total, but not altering the primary mission flow and morality-based aspects of the game.

Key Game Features:
* A True Superhero Experience – Discover what it means to be a true superhero with epic boss battles and powerful cinematic sequences
* Advanced Super Powers – Experience being a full-blown superhero with enhanced electrical attacks, a visceral melee fighting system and new superpowers
* An All-new Open Dynamic Gameworld – Explore a vibrant world in the city of New Marais with increased interactivity and destruction using dynamic parkour moves
* New Morality System – All new morality system gives players freedom of choice and leads to 2 different endings
* User Generated Content – Create and share original missions with a built-in tool set that function as side quests

Checkout some Screenshots:

 

Sony PlayStation 4 Gaming Console Is In Development

Sony hinting at a next-generation PlayStation 4 console and has just reported a $3.1 billion annual loss, with factors ranging from the Japan earthquake to the $170 million loss from the PlayStation Network attack. The PS4 is in the pipeline and this news could be used to counter Nintendo’s confirmation of its upcoming gaming console known as Project Cafe that will be revealed at E3 2011 in June.

Sony is working on a PlayStation 4 video game console even as Nintendo prepares to announce the Wii 2 at the E3 trade show on June 7. The PlayStation 3, which debuted in 2006, still has a lot of life left in it. But Sony has begun incurring increases in research and development costs. That means that we’re getting closer to the introduction of new game systems for the Big Three of video games — a transition time when billions of dollars are at stake and big market share shifts can happen. Sony chief financial officer Masaru Kato said on the company’s earnings call, “For the home equipment the PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform — when we’ll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that — but our development work is already underway, so the costs are incurred there.” Sony has said it foresess a 10-year life span for the PS 3, and the company is not expected to say much about the PS 4 at its press conference at E3 on June 6. Nintendo, on the other hand, has said it plans to introduce a next-generation game console in 2012. Microsoft, whose Xbox 360 was introduced in 2005, hasn’t said if it will launch a new console or is working on one. All of the console makers want to postpone the introduction of a new console as long as possible so they can amortize the huge development costs over a longer period and reap more sales from games in each generation, but they generally introduce a new console when the older models start to see declining sales.

In some respects, a new console is always in development. But the important difference here is that Sony is incurring rising R&D costs. That means it may be in development on some chips, which are difficult to design and prototype and often carry big price tags during the R&D and early manufacturing stage. For the fiscal year, the overall Sony Corp. reported sales at 7.18 trillion yen, or $86.5 billion, down slightly from $88.7 billion a year earlier. Operating income was $2.4 billion, up five-fold from $390 million a year ago. But net losses were $3.1 billion, compared to a loss of $501.3 million a year ago, mainly because of Japan quake-related impacts and accounting changes. Sony’s Networked Products & Services division, which includes the PlayStation game business, saw an improvement. Sales were $19 billion, up 0.4 percent from a year ago. But profit was $429 million, compared with a loss of $1.02 billion a year earlier. Sony credited the game business for the turnaround. Sony expects to sell 15 million units of the PS 3 in the new fiscal year. It plans on selling 6 million PSPs and 4 million PS 2s. Sony made no forecast for sales of its upcoming portable NGP gaming system. The PSN hacker attack is expected to take a toll on earnings in some way. Total sales are expected to be $92.1 billion for the coming year.

 

GeoHot Clarified His Position With PlayStation Network Hacking

Playstation Network is down for over a week now, Apple has announced that it may take another week to fully restore the service again. Many speculated that Geohot was beind the PSN identity theft but George Hotz aka Geohot has dismissed all rumors regarding him being involved in the PSN hacking saga.

Geohot recently got freed from the Lawsuit filed by Sony against him to Jailbreak PS3. He updated his blog recently and told the whole story on it. Below is what he has said.

To start, I sure am glad I don’t have a PSN account about now. And, as a onetime victim of identity theft, I feel for everyone who’s data has been stolen. I’m not going to make cracks at Sony for flipping a shit when /their/ data is compromised, and not even having the decency to apologize when it’s your data that’s misappropriated.

And to anyone who thinks I was involved in any way with this, I’m not crazy, and would prefer to not have the FBI knocking on my door. Running homebrew and exploring security on your devices is cool, hacking into someone elses server and stealing databases of user info is not cool. You make the hacking community look bad, even if it is aimed at douches like Sony.

One of the things I was contemplating back in early January was a PSN alternative, a place for jailbroken consoles to download homebrew and game without messing up anyone else’s experience. Unfortunately events led me off of that path, but gamers, if I had succeeded you would have a place to game online with your PS3 right now. I’m one of the good guys. I used to play games online on PC, I hated cheaters then and I hate them now.

Also, let’s not fault the Sony engineers for this, the same way I do not fault the engineers who designed the BMG rootkit. The fault lies with the executives who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea.

Now until more information is revealed on the technicals, I can only speculate, but I bet Sony’s arrogance and misunderstanding of ownership put them in this position. Sony execs probably haughtily chuckled at the idea of threat modeling. Traditionally the trust boundary for a web service exists between the server and the client. But Sony believes they own the client too, so if they just put a trust boundary between the consumer and the client(can’t trust those pesky consumers), everything is good. Since everyone knows the PS3 is unhackable, why waste money adding pointless security between the client and the server? This arrogance undermines a basic security principle, never trust the client. It’s the same reason MW2 was covered in cheaters, EA even admitted to the mistake of trusting Sony’s client. Sony needs to accept that they no longer own and control the PS3 when they sell it to you. Notice it’s only PSN that gave away all your personal data, not Xbox Live when the 360 was hacked, not iTunes when the iPhone was jailbroken, and not GMail when Android was rooted. Because other companies aren’t crazy.

And let’s talk about Sony’s use of the word illegal. It is illegal, criminally so, to break into someone else’s servers. But when the same word is used to refer to streaming a song from a non RIAA approved website, or to *gasp* playing a homebrew game on your PS3, respect for the word and those who say it is lost.

Weighing in quickly on the whole hacker vs cracker thing. I am a hacker. Whoever did this were hackers also. The media will never start using the word cracker. To me, a hacker is just somebody with a set of skills; hacker is to computer as plumber is to pipes. And the same ethics should apply, if you want to mess with the pipes in your own house, go for it. But don’t go breaking into people’s houses and messing with their pipes. (Note that I do not endorse water piracy)

To the perpetrator, two things. You are clearly talented and will have plenty of money(or a jail sentence and bankruptcy) coming to you in the future. Don’t be a dick and sell people’s information. And I’d love to see a write up on how it all went down…lord knows we’ll never get that from Sony, noobs probably had the password set to ’4′ or something. I mean, at least it was randomly generated.

What do you think about this move from Geohot regarding the PSN sage?

 

Redbox Videogame Rentals

Redbox will officially start offering video game rentals in more than 21,000 locations starting June 17th and will offer titles for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii in their rental kiosks.The company started experimenting with video game rentals almost two years ago after successfully expanding their test offering last October to 5,000 locations, but for 21,000+ other locations there’s now a whole new reason to stand behind someone that wants to check each and every title available when all you want to do is return a disc.

Redbox, America’s movie rental destination announced it will offer video game rentals at more than 21,000 redbox locations nationwide beginning June 17, 2011. Top video games will join new release movies for only $2 a day complementing $1 DVD and $1.50 Blu-ray daily rental prices. The announcement follows a test of video game rentals in select U.S. markets that began in August 2009.“Redbox will increase consumers’ access to video game rentals by leveraging our incredible technology and business model to keep rental prices low for consumers,” said Mitch Lowe, president, redbox. “With more than 21,000 redbox locations slated to feature video game rentals alongside movies this June, redbox will be the one-stop shop for entertainment.”Redbox, a Coinstar Inc. brand has tested video game rentals alongside movies at 5,000 redbox locations. “Redbox has rented more than one million video games in less than two years at these locations, underscoring the popularity of video game play in America,” added Lowe.Nearly 64 percent of people in the United States own a game console. Upon launch, redbox will feature games across the three major console platforms: PLAYSTATION 3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. Video game titles will range from top releases to popular family and kids titles.“Redbox will make discovering the latest games as easy as a trip to the local grocery, convenience or drug store,” said Joel Resnik, vice president, games, redbox.