Whaaaat???
Finally, the studio is asking that Epic be forced to surrender all profits garnered by Gears of War as a result of misconduct.
And the reason,
“That advantage was nowhere more evident than at E3 2006, where Gears of War was awarded ‘Best Game in Show’ and garnered nothing but laudatory press,” the suit reads. “By contrast, Silicon Knights–one of the only other developers to publicly display a playable demonstration of its game–saw Too Human roundly criticized in the videogame press for its technical problems and generally unpolished appearance. The damage to Silicon Knights caused by Epic’s misconduct was manifest, because E3 attendees were able to compare Too Human with another game running ostensibly the same game engine, Gears of War, with vastly superior results.”
So it all comes back to E3 2006 again. First they blamed the press now they blame the engine. I seem to remember another Unreal Engine 3 game called Rainbow Six: Vegas coming out in late 2006 and being very successful. Funny that.
This game has been in and out of development for 8 years. Something tells me they have bigger issues internally than they care to admit.
From Xbox.com about the spring update,
- Added H.264 video support: Up to 10 Mbps peak, Baseline, Main, and High profiles with 2 channel AAC LC.
- Added MPEG-4 Part 2 video support: Up to 5 Mbps peak, Simple Profile with 2 channel AAC LC.
Potential for x264 and Xvid compatibility me thinks! Hells yes!
By now you have all heard the rumours that Microsoft are going to drop the Xbox 360 Version 2 bomb sometime this week. The leaked pics show a clearly visible HDMI port below the the regular video out connection. Also rumoured are an increased hard drive (120gb) and all sorts of new TV based services such as VOD and IPTV.
This is good stuff especially if they are serious about expanding the box to have more TV features. HDMI is only important if you have 1080p and even then you can use a VGA cable. I see the inclusion of HDMI as more of a tick on the back of the box and a counter to Sony rather than a vital need for the system.
All this is also rumoured to coincide with the new CPU chip which should run cooler but no faster. While some people have reported over heating I have never had this problem. What I would like to see is a far quieter DVD drive and that’s a fairly basic component to change compared to a new chip.
However you look at this it’s only a very minor change and the games will still all play the same, it would seem MS are trying to expand the capabilities of the box while not breaking compatibility with v1 systems. If the IPTV is any good (ie available in the UK with UK content) then it will be a simple HDD upgrade to make the jump for existing users.
I have been milking Gears of War all weekend. Got through the entire campaign in several long sittings and enjoyed every second of it (apart from the odd Berserker encounter ;-)). Strangely for me as soon as I was done I jumped right back into it, upped the difficulty and joined a co-op as Dom. The fact that I wanted to play this again straight away unlike anything else should speak for itself.
Oh and by the way if your going to play single player you may as well do so by just starting a new co-op game. This way as you are going through the game other players can jump in and help you out. You retain the saved progress and it might help you in some of the tougher fights.
Finally took the plunge and bought an Xbox 360 this week. I was toing and froing about it but it basically came down to the fact that Gears of War is out this week and now I can afford to run the console.
Had a good weekend of play on PGR3 which came bundled and as I’m sure all 360 owners will agree Xbox Live is by far the highlight of the system. It’s the simplicity of playing quick games, joining up with your friends and chatting to them through the headset that makes all the difference.
If you want to add me to your friends list my tag is j0hn00 or just send me yours in the comments or by email and we will hook up online. On Friday I will be able to chainsaw you in the face :-).
It’s awesome. Great graphics, cool gameplay and one hell of a kick ass chainsaw. Only had time to squeeze in 15 minutes on a 4 vs 4 team deathmatch but I got a really good idea of how it feels and plays. It’s very polished all round and is definitely looking like the kind of system seller Microsoft were after this Christmas.
Not sure if I will have time tonight but I am gonna try and get back down to the bullring later and put some more time in. I would have really liked to try out single player but the deathmatch will have to do for now - in all its fantastic bloody glory.
Anyone in Birmingham tomorrow or this weekend be sure to check out the Xbox 360 demos happening at the bullring. I’m definitely going to check it out tomorrow, can’t wait to play some Gears of War in my lunch break!
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